Order of ServerPackages and ServerActors

[Pileyrei]

Many years ago I saw a thread about the importance of listing your server packages and actors properly.

Is this true? Does it make any difference?

ServerPackages=1
ServerActors=1
ServerActors=2
ServerPackages=2

or

ServerPackages=1
ServerPackages=2
ServerActors=1
ServerActors=2

Does it make any difference to the server, especially for performance in which order you list your packages and actors?

[Barbie]

AFAIK the ServerActors are spawned in order of occurrence. If there are dependencies (ServerActor A needs ServerActor B for example), the order may be relevant.

The order should have no performance effects, but this may depend on the actions the ServerActors do (if for example ServerActor A iterates over all Actors and ServerActor B removes all Actors, the total execution time of A and B might be lower if ServerActor B is loaded first. )

And about ServerPackages: AFAIK this are packages that are send to clients and loaded unconditionally. Above mentioned about dependencies may apply here, too.

(Maybe of interest: Wiki: Package map)

[Pileyrei]

Thanks for the reply

[Wormbo]

Interleaving those has no effect. ServerPackages are calculated into a package map, so order doesn't matter at all there. ServerActors are indeed spawned in exactly the order they are listed, but they are spawned at a time when UnrealScript is not yet active. As a result, they are initialized together with the map actors. On each initialization stage their events will most likely be called after those of the map actors.

[Pileyrei]

Thanks Wormbo, interesting.

I'm also wondering what effect the settings below have:

[Engine.GameEngine]
CacheSizeMegs=64

Does this figure make a difference? It was 8 by default.

[Engine.Player]
ConfiguredInternetSpeed=20000
ConfiguredLanSpeed=65000

On some servers I have seen it like below:

[Engine.Player]
ConfiguredInternetSpeed=
ConfiguredLanSpeed=20000

Again, do these settings influence server performance or in game experience?

Thank you.

Piley

[Barbie]

[Engine.GameEngine]
CacheSizeMegs=64

Does this figure make a difference? It was 8 by default.

Unfortunately information about its propose and what it does is rare, but I have found some information what it is NOT for ^^:

Q: What is the CacheSizeMegs setting & what value should I use for it?

A: This is from the man, Tim Sweeney himself.

CacheSizeMegs does not cache textures, music, models, sounds, code or anything like that. Setting it to a higher value could perhaps even cause problems (if UT reserves this much memory on startup, then you could be wasting a lot of memory that has been reserved for caching only a small amount of data). Keep this value low.

8MB is the recommended maximum size you should set it. Although if you have 128MB RAM + you may want to try larger values (increases performance in some cases). Do not bother using formula's for deciding this value, 4 - 8MB is all that most users need.

(Source: http://www.techspot.com/tweaks/UTFAQ/index.shtml#What7).

[Engine.Player]
ConfiguredInternetSpeed=20000
ConfiguredLanSpeed=65000

Do these settings apply to a server at all?

[Pileyrei]

Hi Barbie

Thanks for this information.
I'm going to set Cachemegs back to 8 as Tim suggests.

Regarding:

ConfiguredInternetSpeed=20000
ConfiguredLanSpeed=65000

These are just settings currently applied to our servers which I don't really know what they are for.

[Barbie]

ConfiguredInternetSpeed=20000
ConfiguredLanSpeed=65000

These are just settings currently applied to our servers which I don't really know what they are for.

As I wrote: I doubt that these settings have any effects on server side. IMO if a client joins, it tells the server the amount of data that it can receive per time period ("ConfiguredXXXSpeed"). The server reduces or increases the amount of transmitted data ("NetPriority") depending on client's ConfiguredXXXSpeed. But better ask someone who knows details about this.^^

For clients settings see also http://www.techspot.com/tweaks/ut/ut-tweak-11.shtml.

[Pileyrei]

Thank you