20 replies to this topic

[CarpetShark]

Gotta say, PGI, I just (sarcasm) love (/sarcasm) being behind rocks and buildings, not being shot by any enemies and suddenly having some portion of my mech's anatomy take a critical hit.

On my screen, when I peeked around that corner to ID an enemy, I was only in the open for a fraction of a second and the potshot he took with his 19 ppc boat missed by a country mile. And that was seconds ago.

Since the only view that matters to the server is that of the shooter, is there a point to trying to use cover since I can never have any assurance of actually being behind any?

Yes, having a shot that looked like it hit not actually do anything is frustrating. But so is being cored by enemy fire when there's a whopping great dropship between you.

[OneEyed Jack]

CarpetShark, on 30 May 2013 - 01:29 AM, said:

the only view that matters to the server is that of the shooter,

Incorrect. I'm not sure exactly how they're comparing the two and figuring it out, but it's not purely from shooter's POV.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending them or saying there's not something... off about HSR. Just that your assumption is incorrect. There's been plenty of times that I took a shot and watched it miss, just to have the damage applied a second later.

Personally, I can live with getting hit by things the server decided hit me well after I watched it miss, as long as it goes both ways. The thing that drives me crazy is that there's no sound, shake or anything else to tell you it just applied damage. Not even a border flash to give you a direction. If you're not actually looking at the paper doll you won't even know you were hit.

[telomere]

If you only popped out for "a fraction of a second", then your opponent only had a fraction of a second on his/her screen to hit you. It's not like you appeared to stay out of cover for longer on their screen.

Imagine if it worked as you appear to be proposing, and the roles are reversed: you see a mech pop out of cover, you turn and manage to hit him in the fraction of a second that he was exposed. But by the time your hit registers with the server, he's back in cover and you do no damage. Fair?

Delayed damage is the trade-off incurred for Host State Rewind. Personally I think it is worth it.

OneEyed Jack, on 30 May 2013 - 02:16 AM, said:

I'm not sure exactly how they're comparing the two and figuring it out, but it's not purely from shooter's POV.

This is true also. HSR works well at long range versus slow moving mechs, but when the mechs are close in and moving fast, you need to lead them by a few mech lengths just like the old days. I'm not really sure why this is the case, as it doesn't appear to correspond to the devs' descriptions of how HSR should work.

[Ralgas]

almost wasted ac/20 rouds tonight, took nearly a reload for the system to recognise i cored a jagger (and he was out in the open)

It has to do with lag differentials and the server transmitting dmg data between the parties

[Cyke]

CarpetShark, on 30 May 2013 - 01:29 AM, said:

Since the only view that matters to the server is that of the shooter, is there a point to trying to use cover since I can never have any assurance of actually being behind any?

The method used is in MWO is server-state authoritative, so the bolded portion of the quoted sentence above is incorrect. As the premise is inaccurate, there's is no way to provide a simple, yet satisfactory answer to your question..

One Eyed Jack and Telomere have already given more detailed explanations (particularly Telomere's case example of role-reversal), besides.


However, I am in complete agreement that impact sounds and visual effects on our client should trigger when damage is applied.
If the server says I took a hit, I'd like to know about it without having to direct my attention to my paperdoll damage display.

[GODzillaGSPB]

Had this happen many times. No impact sound, no impact fx, but suddenly my mech was damaged, sometimes severely damaged. This is definitely not fun at all.

PS: My ping is always around 150, which isn't too bad. At least it should not be the cause of this problem.

Edited by GODzillaGSPB, 30 May 2013 - 03:42 AM.

[Cyke]

GODzillaGSPB, on 30 May 2013 - 03:42 AM, said:

Had this happen many times. No impact sound, no impact fx, but suddenly my mech was damaged, sometimes severely damaged. This is definitely not fun at all.

Agreed.

It's not the delay of the damage that's really unacceptable, it's the lack of impact sound and fx.
In MWO it's very important to know when you take damage. For example, serious damage (like stripped armor from one of your parts) requires you to react by turning that side away from the enemy.

The lack of visual/audio feedback after being hit severely affects our awareness and ability to make tactical decisions!

[AnnoyingCat]

You got eye mounted lazors?

[Fooooo]

Cyke, on 30 May 2013 - 03:49 AM, said:

Agreed.

It's not the delay of the damage that's really unacceptable, it's the lack of impact sound and fx.
In MWO it's very important to know when you take damage. For example, serious damage (like stripped armor from one of your parts) requires you to react by turning that side away from the enemy.

The lack of visual/audio feedback after being hit severely affects our awareness and ability to make tactical decisions!

Yeah some type of notification would be nice, it could get spammy at times, but it would probably be ok.


Even better imo would be if they could somehow adjust the clients game to display the enemys shot correctly.

So instead of seeing the weapon miss you, then dmg you. It corrects it and makes the projectile hit you instead of flying off to the side. (obv the visible shot on your side would be slightly delayed from what was actually happening and may also "curve" , the effect is the same)

Even if it shows it going through a building or mountain, at least you get the proper effect of getting hit.

Or at the least, show the shot missing, but play the hit effect once the dmg happens.... (which may of been what you meant I guess ? )


Although you would probably get a lot of people saying "hackers shooting through buildings!!" because they had no idea how the system worked.

Edited by Fooooo, 30 May 2013 - 05:28 AM.

[Scratx]

It's rather simple, although the implementation is far from being so. What Host State Rewind does is compare your weapons fire against what the server believes you're seeing on the screen. It does so by keeping track of the game state of every mech as far into the past as N miliseconds (I believe N is currently ~450ms since that's how far I recall the Devs saying it could compensate for) and then, whenever it detects weapons fire from a player, does the weapon fire hit detection against the mech states temporally closest to the observed lag.

Put in other words, if you have 150ms lag, the server will do hit detection with your fire against the mech states from 150ms ago, from its perspective.

(note : Now that I think about it, it might actually be from 300ms ago due to "round-trip" issues, but that's splitting hairs by this point. I hope you understand how it works by my explanation.)

[CravenMadness]

Is -that- what the hell has been going on? I swear I've been losing my mind... Running across a field or ducking through cover trying to avoid the flat-plain of death by ppc/acs and I get where I'm going with no registered shots or shake or hud warnings, and suddenly a limb is crippled or my center torso is core exposed... You telling me that even though the effects were dodged, I'm getting hit counted because the snipers were 'close' from their end? And are people able to do this on purpose? Not even aiming but just firing in the general direction of the opponent's reticule?

Edited by CravenMadness, 30 May 2013 - 06:04 AM.

[Lupin]

I scout a lot, problem seem to be here you are being predictably. Do not pop up or out in the same place to get locks or ID.

[VonRunnegen]

Cyke, on 30 May 2013 - 03:26 AM, said:

The method used is in MWO is server-state authoritative, so the bolded portion of the quoted sentence above is incorrect. As the premise is inaccurate, there's is no way to provide a simple, yet satisfactory answer to your question..

HSR isn't server-authoritative (prior to HSR it did use a server-authoritative moel)

It uses a trust relationship with the client for when events happened to guess at the state a variable length of time ago but its not authoritative on anyones view - compare pre-hsr spectating where hits always hit, misses always missed with now where neither of these statements are true despite having a 'server-eye-view' of the action.

Edit: Bah, Scratx's description makes lots more sense, ignore my bumbling effort!

Edited by VonRunnegen, 30 May 2013 - 06:23 AM.

[MeatForBrains]

These issues kept getting worse and worse in COD Black ops. That game does the same thing. But in this game it's not nearly as bad because everyone isn't zipping around the screen at 1000miles an hour.

[Trauglodyte]

It still really sucks taking damage but not having any indication that damage was done. Then again, it also really sucks when you kill a mech and it still takes 1-2s for the animation to kick in the target to drop.

[Cyke]

VonRunnegen, on 30 May 2013 - 06:21 AM, said:

HSR isn't server-authoritative (prior to HSR it did use a server-authoritative moel)

It uses a trust relationship with the client for when events happened to guess at the state a variable length of time ago but its not authoritative on anyones view - compare pre-hsr spectating where hits always hit, misses always missed with now where neither of these statements are true despite having a 'server-eye-view' of the action.

Edit: Bah, Scratx's description makes lots more sense, ignore my bumbling effort!

ScratX is completely correct in his description of HSR, but it is also completely server authoritative.

I've italicized two portions of the quoted text for clarity.

Referring to the first portion:
I'm not certain what you mean by "a trust relationship with the client", but the length of time for the state rewind is neither variable, nor is it a guess. The server rewinds the target's position by precisely the duration of the shooter's latency.
As an aside, no part of hit detection is performed on the client side whatsoever.

Referring to the second portion:
You are also correct in saying it is non-authoritative on anyone's point of view when spectating, because the state that all spectators see is a client state. The spectators are clients, and the game state that they are viewing has no bearing on the authoritative game state held by the server.

Edited by Cyke, 30 May 2013 - 10:01 AM.

[Volthorne]

A lot of these problems could be fixed and much lag could be eliminated if the projectiles were only spawned graphically client-side, instead of (and I believe this is how it is currently done) spawning them graphically server-side and then transmitting to the clients. Then you're only sending/receiving data, instead of data and massive graphic files.

[Cyke]

For clarity, I'll give a quick example, imagining a shooter with a steady 100ms ping who fires a successful shot at a moving enemy 'Mech.

- The shooter always sees the enemy 'Mech 50ms behind where the server actually places the enemy 'Mech
- The "shoot" event/command from the shooter's computer always arrives at the server 50ms late

When the shooter aims and fires his shot, he did his job right, and the shot hits the enemy 'Mech at the location he sees on his client state (note that the apparent location of the enemy 'Mech he sees on his client is already 50ms late, behind the server).

By the time the server receives his shot command another 50ms later, a total of 100ms has passed.

Therefore, before HSR, the server tracks the shot (that scores an apparent client-side hit) passing through the spot where the enemy 'Mech was 50ms + 50ms (100ms) ago.

With HSR, the server tracks the projectile against where the target was 100ms ago. Incidentally, this is exactly where the projectile generated by the 100ms-late shot event had passed through. The server counts it as a hit.


- There is no trust relationship with the client, in the sense that there's any processing on the client-side that claims a hit took place (incidentally this is how Black Ops does it).
- It is completely server authoritative because all the hit detection is performed on the server side, using the state (and state history) data on the server.
- Even the latency amount (used for the rewind) is determined from the server pinging the client.

CravenMadness, on 30 May 2013 - 06:03 AM, said:

You telling me that even though the effects were dodged, I'm getting hit counted because the snipers were 'close' from their end? And are people able to do this on purpose? Not even aiming but just firing in the general direction of the opponent's reticule?

- The shooter always has to strike his target precisely as he sees in on his client state. There is no margin for error greater than a hypothetical zero-latency game. The only difference is that the damage is applied late.

Volthorne, on 30 May 2013 - 09:57 AM, said:

A lot of these problems could be fixed and much lag could be eliminated if the projectiles were only spawned graphically client-side, instead of (and I believe this is how it is currently done) spawning them graphically server-side and then transmitting to the clients. Then you're only sending/receiving data, instead of data and massive graphic files.

No graphical data is sent in any direction to spawn a projectile effect, only the data for the event which consist of a few numbers (which as far as I know should include only the weapon type, origin coordinate and trajectory angle).

Edited by Cyke, 30 May 2013 - 10:04 AM.

[Krzysztof z Bagien]

When (or if) we get regional servers this issue should become insignificant.

[Volthorne]

Cyke, on 30 May 2013 - 10:01 AM, said:

No graphical data is sent in any direction to spawn a projectile effect, only the data for the event which consist of a few numbers (which as far as I know should include only the weapon type, origin coordinate and trajectory angle).

Are you sure about that? I know that DungeonDefenders (another server-authoritative game) did I described above until one patch where it didn't and much rejoicing was done because so much lag was gone (lots of projectiles being spawned by the server tends to cause an ******* of lag).