Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Connection Statistics Window

No doubt if you've played EQ and then tried EQ2 at some point you were probably wondering where the window is that shows your ping to the servers. I think it was F11 in EQ. I know this is something I always wanted to see in EQ2 and I'm not sure why it was never put in. This feature eventually made it into our "Bucket of Awesome" which is just a queue for tasks we think are good ideas and will try to implement at some point in the future.

When we got back from our Christmas vacation and while many people were still out of the office I decided I'd go ahead and try to implement this feature. It went through several iterations before what I ended up with was a window that shows three statistics, ping, bytes per second and frames per second. Having a built in FPS meter will be handy for trying to determine what settings give you the best possible performance.

There's also a handy little bar graph to the right of the statistics that graph the last 30 seconds of data. Originally this graph only showed ping history, but I made a change so that you can display 30 seconds history of either of the three stats. You also have the ability to hide the graph altogether if you just want to make the window as small as possible and only care about your current stats.

Assuming no one has any issue with displaying these statistics in game, hopefully this window should make it onto live servers with the next Game Update.

Screenshot

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi ?=-),

i like the fact that you are trying to bring back the ping window its somthing i was a bit disappointed about not seeing in EQ2 also i am hoping that your G15 application comes out sooner than later as i play with one myself it will good to see EQ2 finally making use of this feature.Now i know you gus have it tough with all the bugs and stuff going on but i was wondering would it be possable to maybe make a DPS window (kinda like the one in SWG) so that people dont have to run a 3rd party parsing system .. and maybe tie that in with the G15 LCD also perhaps? .. just a idea .. thanks for everything youve done so far and keep up the good work ?=-)

Pirate Rule, Paragon of Truth
~Befallen server~

Greg Spence said...

I haven't seen the DPS window in SWG yet, but I'll try to take a look at it. Does the window get updated in real-time during the fight, or is it just updated when the encounter is over?

Thats not a bad idea and definitely wouldn't be hard to implement.

Anonymous said...

its real time but the damage done/recieved needs to be manualy reset after each fight else it just keeps going up but the dps part is acurate.


Pirate Rule, Paragon of Truth
(Befallen server)

Anonymous said...

What I'd love to see is EQ2 Graphics Benchmarks on all those nifty new Graphic card reviews.... and free advertising for EQ2. I hate seeing wow there and no EQ2! The FPS meter rocks and is closer to this "imagined reality" of mine!

Crookshankz said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Crookshankz said...

I'm digging on the Connection Stat Window. It's a nice extra to have in the game.

Also, I'm not the kind of guy who worries much about parses but, a DPS window would be awesome to see in game! I really think thats a brilliant idea.