Reducing lag at Zakum

Hi!

I'm organizing my guild's first Zakum run, and I would like some input from experienced folks about reducing lag from ultimates and the like.

I know that some "lag" is caused by the game having to load new animations and sounds from disk, and I have read (in another thread that I can't find now) about ways to reduce lag and prevent disconnections due to flashy skills.

We do not have many high-powered characters, so I'm planning how to use all of our tools effectively in what is sure to be a long battle. In fairness to our Arch Mages, and to help us take the arms down faster, I will be hooking our AMs up with SE and HB, and encouraging them to nuke the arms with their ultimates. I do not plan to forbid the use of ultimates and summons, as many do.

So, given that, I would like to know of any tips besides these that I may have forgotten. Anything you've done or experienced to help ensure everyone has a good experience during the fight, I'd appreciate knowing!

Here's what I've picked up so far:

• The usual - reboot/restart before the run, close all background programs (though we'll be using Ventrilo), turn graphics down.
  
• Turn in-game sounds off to relieve your system of having to load them.
  
• Take off extra pets and other Cash Shop bling.
  
• Everyone should use each of their skills once before we summon Zakum, so those animations will be loaded into memory already.
  
• Wait 10-15 seconds after summoning, before attacking.
  

Anything else?

Few things I learned that helped. Make your screen alittle bit smaller, using the buttons on the from of it. Just a tab bit smaller top and bottem.

I've also heard setting refresh rate to max helps, but I think thats just FPS..

Make sure you don't have any extra programs running in the background, like AIM, or steam or anything like that.

Make sure to put your quality to Low. High quality makes you lag more.

I usually Alt+Tab a couple times before too until none of my Destop icons' picture need to load. It lags less and you get to maximize Maple Story way more efficiently if you happen to accidently Tab.

Good luck on your first run!

okay, I don't know why where the rumor of rebooting after each run helps with the lag.

IT DOES NOT.

If anything, rebooting right after a run will make you lag again. Going into the run without rebooting will save maple to cache all those sprites again. The sprites from the previous run will be all cached into ram already.

I'm sure changing the graphics to low does something...but I doubt that it is a big enough difference that will determine if you will lag or not.

Most people lag because of their internet, not their computer. Having flashy things on pets or characters shouldn't matter at all. But that might just be because I've never used a computer that was on the fence with maple. The computers I've tried either ran it or it didn't.

If you're going to have AMs summon and do ultimates, I don't think the set graphics to low would do anything.

Just make sure if they're running vista, they do the set graphics to low then back to high trick so they won't D/C.

Restart your computer. Then end all your programs before they load, and then run CC Cleaner before opening ventrillo. After doing all the above mentioned, don't forget to end explorer.exe before starting maple.

Once you start maple, changing graphics to low does help, but it only helps if you load the high quality first. Therefore, have everyone enter the altar on high quality, then have everyone spam EVERY ONE OF THEIR SKILLS THEY WILL USE DURING THE RUN, and then have everyone turn low quality. After turning low quality, have everyone spam their skills again.

Then summon zakum. I find the 10 second rule very dumb. The point of 10 seconds is so that people don't start at the same time. Having everyone attack at start and having everyone attack after 10 seconds is the same thing. So... assign the number of seconds for people to start attacking once you summon zakum. Since there's always an initial lag, wait for 5 seconds, then have one person have 6 sec, another 7 sec, another 7 seconds, and so on.

When all the arms are downed, do the same, assign number of seconds. Do that for each body.

Last thing, assign two archmages to clear the regular spawn and two bishops to clear the fire/ice-immune little blue spawn. Don't let the spawn build up because although you will lag a bit when the meteo kills it, you will lag even more if you try taking them down one by one and let them build up.

Don't listen to the guy above me. Nowhere do you need to alt tab, (the tab button isn't even used so lol if you hit that), and so since you should have explorer off, you won't need to load any desktop icons.

Restart your computer. Then end all your programs before they load, and then run CC Cleaner before opening ventrillo. After doing all the above mentioned, don't forget to end explorer.exe before starting maple.

Once you start maple, changing graphics to low does help, but it only helps if you load the high quality first. Therefore, have everyone enter the altar on high quality, then have everyone spam EVERY ONE OF THEIR SKILLS THEY WILL USE DURING THE RUN, and then have everyone turn low quality. After turning low quality, have everyone spam their skills again.

Then summon zakum. I find the 10 second rule very dumb. The point of 10 seconds is so that people don't start at the same time. Having everyone attack at start and having everyone attack after 10 seconds is the same thing. So... assign the number of seconds for people to start attacking once you summon zakum. Since there's always an initial lag, wait for 5 seconds, then have one person have 6 sec, another 7 sec, another 7 seconds, and so on.

When all the arms are downed, do the same, assign number of seconds. Do that for each body.

Last thing, assign two archmages to clear the regular spawn and two bishops to clear the fire/ice-immune little blue spawn. Don't let the spawn build up because although you will lag a bit when the meteo kills it, you will lag even more if you try taking them down one by one and let them build up.

Don't listen to the guy above me. Nowhere do you need to alt tab, (the tab button isn't even used so lol if you hit that), and so since you should have explorer off, you won't need to load any desktop icons.

The 10 second rule is to give all the players time to load zakum's sprites, allowing their PC to catch up. It doesn't have anything to do with not having everyone start at the same time.

You're idea of starting one after another is completely wack. For example if party 1 starts at second 1, party 2 start at second 2 and so on, until party 6, at which point all the parties would be attacking at the same time.

Image quality IMO only affects the background, doesn't affect the skill sprites at all, so your method of the skill sprites won't do anything.

Alt+tab is actually one method to nuke the infamous Zakum Vista glitch. So it graphics changing during the battle and getting SP1.

As for setting graphics to low, this is to have a much lower load time when fetching the map images from the map.wz files, and it also takes up less memory in the system so you can do other shyts with less l4g. In theory anyways. The reason it doesn't affect the monsters and characters themselves is because the high amount of detail is necessary so you can actually act on what you see. Otherwise it'd be a lot like looking at blobs doing indistinguishable motions which wouldn't really make sense unless you've seen it hundreds of times.

The 10 second rule is to give all the players time to load zakum's sprites, allowing their PC to catch up. It doesn't have anything to do with not having everyone start at the same time.

You're idea of starting one after another is completely wack. For example if party 1 starts at second 1, party 2 start at second 2 and so on, until party 6, at which point all the parties would be attacking at the same time.

Actually harrisonized's method of having people gradually attack is a correct method in helping people cope with CPU stress. No matter what you do in pre-Zakum summoning, you'll never be able to load the "monster-is-hit" images or all of the other fancy crap associated with it (unless everyone bothers to smack around Bains). Take for example a Paladin's holy ACB attack on a monster. When that attack hits monsters, you'll see lots of shininess on the monsters where you hit them. It's very noticeable, and it looks a lot like a shining star with a large aura. This image will never appear otherwise.

If you've played Counter-Strike or most of the other games by Valve, you'll probably have noticed a phase where the computer is "pre-caching resources". This is a step that reduces l4g in the game caused by loading graphic images and such into its RAM. Once graphics and images are called from the file or w/e from the hard drive into the RAM, the computer can re-use and recall those images with little to no delay, thus allowing for a smooth experience with graphical applications.

There are no "monster is hit" sprites for every attack. The attack hit is just one little sprite that shows on top of the monster's normal or KBed sprite. Those are nothing compared to Zakum's body&arm sprites and Mage's ultimates. I also believe sprites for one attack loads together. Just like each sprite for a monster doesn't load separately.

There are no "monster is hit" sprites for every attack. The attack hit is just one little sprite that shows on top of the monster's normal or KBed sprite. Those are nothing compared to Zakum's body&arm sprites and Mage's ultimates. I also believe sprites for one attack loads together. Just like each sprite for a monster doesn't load separately.

Oh? One time Zakum1 didn't start atking for whatever reason until it was half dead. When it started attacking, I had the usual l4gging sprees. Afterwards I was fine... until 2nd body started.

KajitiSouls is right, Maple reads its sprites from the RAM, so if they aren't there it must move them from the hard drive, which is the majority of your lag. Usually your first shot of everyday is slightly lagged.

After you close all programs (while you are still alt+tabbed), ctrl+alt+delete, then click the "processes" tab.

End 'explorer.exe'. Your desktop will disappear. To get back in game just alt+tab. Explorer.exe is what allows you to explore (really?) your computer. Its the UI. Ending this forces your computer to dump its RAM of all non-running programs. IE if you were playing Half Life earlier, that's still in your RAM.

To get it back, under the ctrl+alt+delete, hit file->new task... and type in explorer.exe

Nuking arms is generally OK, but nuking summons could be a problem. If you're going to allow AM to nuke summons, it's best to tell them to lure the summons to the right. This negates the loads on the left side, and if you fall down on the left side, the summon will distract other attackers, whereas on the right side, it doesnt disturb anyone.

Oh? One time Zakum1 didn't start atking for whatever reason until it was half dead. When it started attacking, I had the usual l4gging sprees. Afterwards I was fine... until 2nd body started.

that would be the HP bar for zakum loading?

that would be the HP bar for zakum loading?

No, the HP bar was there the whole entire time for Zakum1. As for the start of Zakum2... I think we both know where the l4g comes from there.

OK, some interesting ideas are presented here, and some silly ones. However, I know enough to tell which ones are bollocks.

Regarding rebooting/restarting, it obviously helps something, because I've experienced a very specific problem known as "Second APQ Disconnect," which many of you will likely understand. I don't know if this affects Zakum, but I've also experienced a problem of being disconnected a few seconds after I return to El Nath, which isn't really a big deal because, obviously, if I'm back in town I'm not still fighting.

Somebody said lag is usually caused by Internet connection; well, this is true for a certain kind of lag, such as the delay between when you do something and when you see the result. The other type of lag, which is what I care about here, is caused by the delay between the game needing to display something and when it is actually able to display it.

An example of the worst sort of this: I was training at Birks, and I had been there for an hour, with nobody else entering my map. Suddenly I saw a red dot at the top and my screen froze for 10 seconds; when it thawed, I died. Why did this happen? Well, it's because my lame computer has a hard drive that powers down when it hasn't been used in a while, despite my efforts to tell Windows otherwise. For an hour, the only sprites it had needed were the sheep, the map, me, and our little attacks. When the other player came in, it needed to load all the sprites for that character's appearance, and it had to wait several seconds for the hard drive to spin up before it could load those from disk. Time did not stand still while this was happening, so the mob I had been fighting was able to get to me while I was waiting.

Harrison, I like your idea of having different start times for different people. I understand the reasoning behind it and I will suggest it. I think a combination is good there: A few seconds for all the bits of Zakum to load, then a delay so everyone won't have to load every single attack animation at once. Also the bit about changing qualities is good; that helped me to survive long enough to get my helm, on a Vista machine.

As for killing explorer.exe... if I do that, it automatically restarts. I think rebooting the computer accomplishes the same thing there.

I will try these ideas this weekend, assuming the group I've been going with has their normal runs, and see if it changes my experience. (Note to self: Figure out how not to die on first body next time, for testing purposes.)

Also, the idea about "have your Bishops take out the element-resistant summons" is good... except that we don't have any. Still, I understand what you mean.