Important Netplay Finding

[Scribe99]

Differences in window sizes and graphics options between opponents make a huge difference to online gameplay.

If you have vastly different setup than your opponent, chances are that one or both of the players will experience very unresponsive or choppy gameplay.

I tested this out with a couple people today after trying to play someone who was using the "stretch" option under the graphics tab. We had a very stable and fast connection, but on my side, the game kept running at between 10-20 FPS, when it should have ran at 60 FPS. What happens is the game might play at the correct speed, but control is bad and the graphics look very jittery. If you turn on your frame rate display from your options, you should be able to see how off it is.

So if you are running full screen or stretched mode, and your opponent isn't; it's going to create problems. Even the smaller differences between someone playing the game in maximized window vs. a small window will impact the smoothness of the game.

Basically there are four main options: full screen, window, maximized window, and screen stretch. Stretched mode and full screen mode seem to be the ones that really negatively affect the game when both players don't pick the same thing. The bigger the difference in settings, the bigger the hit in frame rate.

I'm not sure what most people prefer to play on but I play without stretch mode or full screen (because they slow down the emulator). And I usually play on either a regular window or a maximized window. I don't know if we need to make a standard setup, but if you run into problems it won't hurt to ask your opponent what their settings are.

So far, just by setting up my options the same as my opponent, I was able to enjoy server play a lot more because the frame rate remained steady.

[dmac]

I thought about this being a factor once, but I didn't think it actually was.

I always play on a stretched screen so I guess now I'm gonna play on a maximized windowed screen.