[Aion] Latency Reducer 1.0

Post by **ayu** » 07 Jan 2010, 18:54

Me and a friend use a small "tweak" to lower our latency in the game Aion, it became a pain to change the values in the registry every time we wanted to play and every time we were done, so I thought it could be fun to create a small tool in C++ to make the job easier ^^

Creating the tool wasn't the hard part, it was getting QT to work together with all the windows functions >_>

The tool turns of Nagle's algorithm (TcpNoDelay)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagle%27s_algorithm

and the maximum number of outstanding ACKs is set to 1, making all packets being acknowledged (TcpAckFrequency)

Reducing ping by up to 50%.
When the tool disabled the tweak, it reverts everything that it did (removes the keys), since the keys are not there by default.
The tweak should only be turned on when playing, because it might have negative effects on other applications (haven't found any examples yet though), and might not work for all games (Works for world of warcraft though).

-=Aion Latency Reducer 1.0 - by cats=-

[Download]

Post by **lilrofl** » 08 Jan 2010, 00:15

downloaded and gave it a go on my buddies Wow, extremely positive results.

Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit
AMD Quad core @ 2.6 Ghz
6 GB Ram
nvidia nforce 10/100

Latency dropped by >100 in all areas tested, frame rate was boosted by between 1 and 3 (not sure if this had anything to do with your program, and lag was significently reduced, especially in high lag areas like Dalaran.

One bug, the disable feature didn't shut the process down, the program remained enabled after multiple clicks... however closing it down and reloading it seemed to reset back to default.

Great job Cats, thanks =)

IceDane · Post by **IceDane** » 08 Jan 2010, 06:44

It shouldn't affect WoW at all, so you were probably seeing something else, lilrofl. It did once, but World of Warcraft devs started doing this themselves a few patches ago.

Post by **ayu** » 08 Jan 2010, 06:47

lilrofl wrote: One bug, the disable feature didn't shut the process down, the program remained enabled after multiple clicks... however closing it down and reloading it seemed to reset back to default.

That could be the UAC bug lurking around, since I had that very same issue. Either that or the registry values weren't changed, but the program notifies on as many errors as possible.

I have a new version where the UAC bug is fixed, but I want to do some more stuff before I release it (since it will be the final release)

l0ngb1t · Post by **l0ngb1t** » 08 Jan 2010, 12:35

mmmm niceee worrkkkk
may i ask what tools you use to build the GUI... my teacher recommended netbeans, but i think your opinion will be very helpful...

Post by **ayu** » 08 Jan 2010, 12:56

l0ngb1t wrote:mmmm niceee worrkkkk
may i ask what tools you use to build the GUI... my teacher recommended netbeans, but i think your opinion will be very helpful...

At the moment I use QT to create my GUIs, and so far I am very satisfied with it. It has a very good design tool that works wonderful when you just need to throw together something quick

Post by **ayu** » 08 Jan 2010, 14:00

Update: 1.0 Final

*Added UAC support in Vista and 7
*Fixed a bug where the status in the program would change even though the tweak did not succeed.
*Added better error reporting
*Cleaned up the code a bit

leetnigga · Post by **leetnigga** » 08 Jan 2010, 14:17

cats wrote:*Cleaned up the code a bit

Where can I find this "code"?

I suppose the huge executable size is because of the use of QT? Using native Windows controls the executable would only be kilobytes big.

Nice work.

Post by **ayu** » 08 Jan 2010, 14:21

leetnigga wrote: Where can I find this "code"?

At the moment, you can't

leetnigga wrote: I suppose the huge executable size is because of the use of QT? Using native Windows controls the executable would only be kilobytes big.

Yeah that's because I didn't remove all parts of the library when recompiling, and I will have to read some more about the different parts of QT later, so that I know what more stuff I can remove safely when recompiling again

IceDane · Post by **IceDane** » 08 Jan 2010, 17:12

leetnigga wrote:
cats wrote:*Cleaned up the code a bit
Where can I find this "code"?

I suppose the huge executable size is because of the use of QT? Using native Windows controls the executable would only be kilobytes big.

Nice work.

Native Windows API, and/or MFC is shit. API is like a massive trolling attempt.. First time you try it out, you go "Wait, are they seriously going to make me manually position my controls with coordinates?".. Then MFC, which hasn't been 'beautified' since 1999. It's the same clusterfuck, and it all works with a fuckload of stupid macros and 'magic functionality' that you can't understand properly, simply due to the fact that the code is proprietary.

Post by **ayu** » 08 Jan 2010, 17:47

It is worth mentioning that for this application to have any effect, you have to restart your computer after enabling it (I will make a small change that will notify the user about that).

Before I enabled it, my ping was 200-300 ms.
After I enabled it and restarted the computer, the ping had dropped in game to 40-60 ms. I did this a few times to make sure, and it does have a significant effect