Team Fortress 2 Forum

I have Half-Life 2 (and episodes 1 and 2), Portal, Team Fortress 2, and Sin Episodes: Emergence all running on my iMac with Crossover Games, and all running pretty well. Here's my issue: When opening Team Fortress 2, first there's the "launching Team Fortress 2..." popup from steam. Then it goes into the game, the picture of the heavy and Medic and Spy, and "loading" in the bottom right hand corner. This takes a while to load, usually 2-3 minutes, but that's normal, I think (all of the games I have from steam take a while to load into the main menu). However, when I try to join a game online, the loading bar fills nearly all the way to the top, and then stays on "retrieving server information..." for usually 4-5 full minutes! After this, it moves on to "sending client information..." for just a second or so, and then the game loads. Once in game, everything runs smoothly, but is it normal to have to wait 5 full minutes every time I join a game in TF2? Loading a save file in HL2 takes a minute at most for me. How do I make TF2 join online games faster?

Thanks in advance for any help

PS. Unrelated TF2 question: in the find server list, what's better, a low or high number in the "latendy" collumn?

What are the specs of your iMac? What sort of internet connection do you have?

Servers on my local ISP network with my 3mbit ADSL, take roughly 30 - 40 seconds to join.
Servers on other networks can take up to 2 mins.
On Vista my TF2 can take anything up to 2 mins to join a server. I've got a pretty powerful PC. Specs of the system seem to play a role.
I've also noticed when new patches come out, the VAC stuff can take a while to complete. Also if TF2 has to download maps of the server it can take time. It's a bit hit and miss.

If I compare Vista load times to Crossover Games on Ubuntu, they are roughly the same.

Sorry I couldn't be more help.

Jack,

I'm afraid I can't offer you any specific help (my load times are only that long when downloading a large map), but I can tell you that latency, or ping, is a measure (in milliseconds) of how long it takes information to be sent from your computer to the server in question and back. So if you see a ping of 250, for example, it will take a full quarter of a second to get information back and forth. Personally, I find 150 and below to be good, but I prefer playing on servers where my ping never breaks 100.

If it gets too high, you'll find the game won't play well and things can get frustrating; for example, you might think you just got a headshot on that enemy, but since your ping is so high your computer doesn't "tell" the server in time, and so you miss.

Anyway, the terms "ping," "latency," and "lag" are all, for the most part, synonymous, though lag has a negative connotation to it (i.e. high ping), while the others are more neutral.

Regards,
Brighid

P.S.
If you weren't aware, you can check your latency in-game by holding TAB to show scores and noting your ping to the right of your name in the list.