Too bad for the lag...

[Khathuluu]

I really enjoy the game but it's just sad how badly multiplayer is implemented. I can understand that when you host your server as Online, you can get easily bottlenecked by internet connection, but over direct Lan too? That's just sad... computer specs are not the problem and it's just plain sad that they can't implement proper package transfers and sync over freaking Lan ( I do know it's early-access and it's easier said than done, but this is a freaking core mechanism that is barely working )... who cares about the rest when you can hardly move away from camp and haha, forget about even trying to fight anything... timing dodges? :))) riiiiight...

The situation reminds me of good old Warcraft 3 ( especially on "private servers" ) where the game was smooth for the host and almost always super-crappy for the opponent... as long as you were lucky enough to be the host, you kinda had a free win. Ohh, the memories... "good" old times...

Really hope they improve on this in the near future... would be a shame not to and end up losing a bunch of potential customers because of this. Cheers!

[inihility]

Been playing lots of DST on LAN with no lag problems whatsoever, if you're sure computer specs isn't the issue, it could very well be your network configuration (how your computers are connected to your network, etc.).

[Emperor Palpoutine]

I'm playing with a friend of mine that lives at about 45 min - 1h from my place yet NEVER encountered any lag/problem whatsoever. I was hosting and he also never had any lag issues. Check your firewall or whatever that could affect either your internet speed or maybe your computer specs are so low (like windows XP low) that it causes lag.

[Khathuluu]

Well, it's good to hear that it's working fine for other people... too bad I'm not in not part of the gang and seemingly, neither is anyone else I've tried playing the game with. At best, with some people hosting it was more bearable than with others, but you could still feel it's not very responsive.

[Thisis a long name to test]

Make sure your power savings settings are not set to Balanced or Power Saver. This can lead to your computer actual running at 33% of it's actual speed (this applies to the server by the way)

[Khathuluu]

That's always on High Performance :) But thanks...

[sunzribe]

Is your LAN all Ethernet cables, or some on WIFI? Win8 + WIFI connections might have some issues. Also, if you are hosting, Port Forward 10999 UDP to your assigned IP in your router.

[Khathuluu]

I haven't yet tried over direct Ethernet, only WiFI and indeed Windows 8.1. Maybe a more special setup is indeed required for this particular game since every other game seems to be working just fine. I'll maybe spend some time later to see if it can be improved somehow. Anyway, things should be much simpler than that...

[BxAnesthetic]

I've played a Don't starve together game with people from the netherlands, new york, north carolina, canada and england. Nobody has complained about lag. Its all you.

[Oykenshui]

On all the servers I've played on, I've only had it lag once, when my ping was over 500 on a server. Other than that, it's been smooth as butter. Looks like it's probably a problem on your end.

[SnickerToodles]

No, it's not just him. The lag is atrocious. The person I play with has bad internet, but he's a "good host" and my internet is great. And the other game we play together has only ever had lag because I have a bad processor, not due to internet, while the lag on DST is because of bad connectivity.

But the thing it, it doesn't always lag. Sometimes the server will eventually start working correctly, and sometimes it takes literally two minutes to pick up an item or move one foot with no sign of getting better, and sometimes it runs perfectly. Ping is indicative of nothing; usually the spikes occur when I have less than a hundred ping and then it'll run perfectly when I have 500 ping. (And it goes from 80-1000 in this one server, but never seems to have any correlation with the actual game speed.)

I don't mean to sound like I don't like the game. The last time we played we were at Day 220, and if that's not dedication, I don't know what is... xD The lag is just ridiculous though. I really don't understand how half the people can play with no problem and half can barely play at all.

[Khathuluu]

A tiny update: I could not manage to improve things the way I was initially hoping to, but I did find a solution that fits my needs. Shorty put: run your own DEDICATED server.

At first, I've played around with the dedicated server on my local machine and the results felt much better ( quite an improvement ) over the standard way of hosting the game ( both over an internet connection and LAN - wireless )... That being said, I can only ( hastily ) conclude that the dedicated server is indeed better optimized ( as also stated on the Wiki: http://dont-starve-game.wikia.com/wiki/Don%E2%80%99t_Starve_Together_Dedicated_Servers ) than the client version and if you want to minimize ( even eliminate ) lag, then it's something you should consider doing. After this initial success, I've decided to make things slightly bit more permanent and installed the dedicated server on one of my VPS hosts ( specs: Ubuntu Server 14.04.1 LTS, 6 cores, 8GB Ram - up to 16 GB dynamic - 250 GB SSD and 500 Mbit/s connection ).

I'm planning on playing with a couple of friends in the upcoming days ( 8-10 people ) but for the time being, only 3-4 of us were able to test it. As of yet, there were no issues, no lag ( server ping of 30-34 ), everything working the way I was expecting things to work before I started this topic.

Hope this information will be of help to some of you. Cheers!