Games like counterstrike, day of defeat, team fortress, desert combat, etc.
Does anyone play them on dialup, and is the ping low enough to play comfortably?
I used to play a little-known HL mod called Gunman Chronicles on dial up until about 6 mo’s ago. Short answer yes you can play. Especially if you are running at 48kbs or above. I did get good enough not to die constantly.
I can’t speak for some of the games you mentioned, but my son would play CS, TFC, and some of the other HL mods on dialup. Some servers would kick him for being too slow.
And, it would get very annoying trying to play when you are dying all the time to lower-ping players. But he did play until we got cable.
You can change some graphics settings to help lower your ping too. And make sure your comp is NOT running anything other than the game. But there is a world of diference between dial-up and cable.
Who knows, you may end up getting more skillful.
I played all the HL mods you mentioned on dialup for two years and did well enough. Ultimately you’re going to reach a point where your PING will matter more than your skill. I’d usually finish 5th or 6th on my team on dialup, then the day I got broadband, I was finishing 1st or 2nd.
Now more-modern ones, I don’t know if I’d even try.
I wouldn’t try first person games with dial-up these days.
I played Team Fortress Classic for a long time on a dialup connection. I was pretty good, but at a certain point I found that I couldn’t improve much, my ping was keeping me at a certain level of play. GMRyujin is absolutely right: eventually you’ll hit a glass ceiling, and your ping will be holding you back no matter how good you are.
That said, games like Counter-Strike are really properly played on a LAN. Playing CS on a dial-up connection is equal parts painful and humilating.
Now, dial-up won’t stop you playing and being good at other types of games. RTS’s and some online RPGs (NWN can be great fun multiplayer) can remain quite enjoyable with dial-up, since reflexes and speed aren’t quite as important. They play a role, mind you, but having a high ping isn’t the critical handicap it is in FPS games.
The biggest problem with dialup is that the guys with low latency won’t play you because playing a game with severe lag really isn’t a lot of fun, so it’s hard to find a game.
You can play strategy games quite well on dial-up, especially some of the older ones.
yeah you can, but you will be at a large disadvantage compared to people who have broadband. You can still play though, and as long as you have a decent connection it shoulden’t be so bad as to make the game totally unfun.
The surb: assuming, of course, you don’t have the graphics so high they grind your computer to a halt, messing with your graphics and stuff running in the background will have NO effect on your ping. Lag from setting the graphics up too high and lag from having a poor connection are seperate issues, even if the effect is similar.