135 replies to this topic

[Tice Daurus]

Codejack, on 15 January 2013 - 12:00 PM, said:

Ah, so you've just made it REALLY easy to cheat. Combine that with the fact that the netcode problem has nothing to do with ping, and you've just explained why nothing works.

Do you people know even the first ****ing thing about games?!

Way to go Codejack. We had Matthew answering questions here and you came in here with your smart-@$$ attitude and ruined it for the rest of us. Way to go. Way to go.

Jerk.

[Kristov Kerensky]

Causing lag isn't going to help you with this server side system, and that's not how you go about getting around this system. There are ways, they are being used currently in MWO, we all see them but most don't realize what they are seeing and put it down to the netcode.

As for going client side and just trying to keep up with the hacks..yeah..about that. Even Balance does this with the Punk Buster software that's used by many games currently, and having worked with the great folks at EB I can tell you, it's a frustrating and NEVER ending job and you are always 2 to 3 stages behind the hackers. PB contains some incredibly invasive measures, scanning hardware and OS before,during and after the game looking for things that shouldn't be happening. Even Balance also has memberships in the hack groups, they still are always playing catch up though.

As for why PGI is using this engine..money considerations would be my first guess I'd far prefer them using the newest Frost Engine from DiCE(Battlefield 3) because it's capable of handling huge maps and allows for enviromental destruction and even taking damage from said enviromental destructions side effects, as anyone who's had a building face dropped on them can attest to

[PropagandaWar]

Quick question. If the movement portion is basically done does that mean we will get knockdowns fairly quick? I would assume collisions and falling trees would have very little to do with the weapon portion of the code. Of course not knowing anything about programming I could be way off.

Edited by PropagandaWar, 15 January 2013 - 12:22 PM.

[Kristov Kerensky]

Codejack, on 15 January 2013 - 12:13 PM, said:

Given the "community involvement" that we receive, I'm just as happy about that.

Seriously, do you enjoy it when corporate stooges are marched out to BS you?

SOME of us actually have real world experience in the issues being discussed here Code and we see that we're getting good solid information, information we understand and really appreciate getting..well..we WERE getting until you, having no clue, had to start in harrassing a dev, for which I did report you.

Thanks for the info Matthew, and if you could find it in you to just ignore Code, any info on why this engine was chosen over others WOULD be greatly appreciated.

[Wizard Steve]

Matthew Craig, on 15 January 2013 - 12:05 PM, said:

And I'm done answering questions for the day

Cheers Matthew. I really enjoyed reading your posts in this thread; it reminded me when I used to read .plan updates on Blues News in the latter part of the last century

Codejack, on 15 January 2013 - 12:00 PM, said:

Ah, so you've just made it REALLY easy to cheat. Combine that with the fact that the netcode problem has nothing to do with ping, and you've just explained why nothing works.

Do you people know even the first ****ing thing about games?!

What a tool!

[PropagandaWar]

Codejack, on 15 January 2013 - 12:13 PM, said:

Given the "community involvement" that we receive, I'm just as happy about that.

Seriously, do you enjoy it when corporate stooges are marched out to BS you?

Codejack you aren't a community member. Community helps each other not against each other. Seriously grow up.

[Glucose]

Codejack, on 15 January 2013 - 12:13 PM, said:

Given the "community involvement" that we receive, I'm just as happy about that.

Seriously, do you enjoy it when corporate stooges are marched out to BS you?

Next time read the article he posted. Seriously -- "Code" should be nowhere in your name. You're doing anyone with an ounce of programming talent a disservice.

[Codejack]

somedood, on 15 January 2013 - 12:14 PM, said:

What are you talking about? He just explained the reason why latency is currently a problem, why they chose the server-authoritive approach and what they are doing to adjust for latency to fix it in the future. Obivously latency is a problem right now, and a user that has varying latency causes problems right now, but the fixes will address those issues so that they will no longer be a problem (or at least a very minor problem compared to now).

Everything he posted made complete sense and you're just being a complete jerk, how is that helping anything?

What are you talking about? He just told you that the hit detection system is based on time stamps, which are easy to alter, and ping, which is unrelated to the netcode issue; THAT IS WHY EVERYTHING IS BROKEN!

Do you like it when they blow smoke up your ***?

[Nathiel Surefire]

Average ping over the course of a few seconds is probably recorded server side and timestamps derived from those values, so the client never has the ability to alter them to begin with. Also, ping has everything to do with it, nearly every netcode problem can be derived from the fact that the client's view of the world is slightly behind the server's (barring the only other three possible causes: large packet sizes, packet drop and missing information in packets). If I'm wrong with the ping assumption, please make a list of underlying netcode issues here and show why they are not directly ping related problems instead of claiming that the problems are not ping related and failing to shed light on where they actually come from.

Edited by Nathiel Surefire, 15 January 2013 - 12:47 PM.

[Codejack]

Nathiel Surefire, on 15 January 2013 - 12:46 PM, said:

Average ping over the course of a few seconds is probably recorded server side and timestamps derived from those values,

If they do that, then it is SERIOUSLY hosed; what happens if, like myself, the person is on cable internet and the ping will vary significantly over the course of any 5 minute period? It will permanently be off.

Nathiel Surefire, on 15 January 2013 - 12:46 PM, said:

so the client never has the ability to alter them to begin with

But the client can alter the timestamp, and if it's that easy to figure out how it is calculating it, then reversing that is easy, too.

Nathiel Surefire, on 15 January 2013 - 12:46 PM, said:

. Also, ping has everything to do with it,

No. No. No, no, no, no, no. N-O. No. N. O. Super-slow motion: Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

I just stopped you here because you obviously haven't had the problem. I can have 50 ping and the worst lag ever, or 100 ping and it plays OK.

Ping has nothing to do with it.

[Grraarrgghh]

And people say goons are going to destroy the "community". Fat chance, all the jerkwads like Codejack will do it far more efficiently with far less laughs.

[Codejack]

Grraarrgghh, on 15 January 2013 - 12:54 PM, said:

And people say goons are going to destroy the "community". Fat chance, all the jerkwads like Codejack will do it far more efficiently with far less laughs.

I wouldn't be here if the devs hadn't hosed everything in the first place.

[Glucose]

Codejack, on 15 January 2013 - 12:51 PM, said:

No. No. No, no, no, no, no. N-O. No. N. O. Super-slow motion: Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

I just stopped you here because you obviously haven't had the problem. I can have 50 ping and the worst lag ever, or 100 ping and it plays OK.

Ping has nothing to do with it.

We're not talking about your terrible cable connection Codejack, we're talking about having to lead your target with instant-hit weapons like lasers. That's the current system they are going to change, which is part of the reason why firing at fast moving targets is problematic. The faster they move on your screen the further ahead you have to aim your shot, even with only 50-100ms delay.

[The Trice]

so wait a minute when i see a mech moving in front of me , and i want to hit with my ac/5 i always not aim at its center torso , but i aim a little 2 -5 meters away from the center torso where the target will be when the shot gets there . so it seems at the time of the shooting that i was aiming at the open air in front of enemy mech thats because when shot will get there it supposedly to hit the enemy target , that means that i Shouldn't be doing that ???

[Red squirrel]

Matthew Craig, on 15 January 2013 - 12:05 PM, said:

And I'm done answering questions for the day (enjoy the patch everyone)

Don't get disencouraged by trolls.

[Codejack]

Glucose, on 15 January 2013 - 12:57 PM, said:

We're not talking about your terrible cable connection Codejack, we're talking about having to lead your target with instant-hit weapons like lasers. That's the current system they are going to change, which is part of the reason why firing at fast moving targets is problematic. The faster they move on your screen the further ahead you have to aim your shot, even with only 50-100ms delay.

Yea, my 20Mb internet connection sucks

No, the ping has nothing to do with it. Ping can be fine and the lag can suck (and yes, I am familiar with what we are talking about, haveing to lead with lasers, etc), or my ping can be a little higher and it can be fine.

Ping has nothing to do with the netcode problem.

[Glucose]

Codejack, on 15 January 2013 - 12:59 PM, said:

Yea, my 20Mb internet connection sucks

No, the ping has nothing to do with it. Ping can be fine and the lag can suck (and yes, I am familiar with what we are talking about, haveing to lead with lasers, etc), or my ping can be a little higher and it can be fine.

Ping has nothing to do with the netcode problem.

Then whats your netcode problem?

[Codejack]

Glucose, on 15 January 2013 - 01:00 PM, said:

Then whats your netcode problem?

Sometimes everything just lags out; enemy mechs rubberband, my lasers striking them do no damage on the paper doll, I'll be going along trying to run through a canyon or tunnel and keep running into the wall as I keep over- or under-turning. The usual stuff.

I notice months ago that it had no correlation to my ping. My ping can be just fine and the game will be unplayable.

[Kristov Kerensky]

Codejack, on 15 January 2013 - 01:14 PM, said:

Sometimes everything just lags out; enemy mechs rubberband, my lasers striking them do no damage on the paper doll, I'll be going along trying to run through a canyon or tunnel and keep running into the wall as I keep over- or under-turning. The usual stuff.

I notice months ago that it had no correlation to my ping. My ping can be just fine and the game will be unplayable.

And right there you show you have no understanding of networking. I'm running on 3Mb down/1.5Mb up cable, my ping doesn't vary more then 5ms when I'm in game, usually in the 50-60ms range with sub 1% packet loss as well, this is a very good, clean and tight network connection.

You on the other had Codejack, are experiencing a very bad network connection. That 20Mb doesn't mean jack btw, since you are limited to the bandwidth on all the nodes between you and the server, and if you'd run some traces I'll bet you find some bad nodes between you and the servers, THAT is the cause of your issues.

Keep in mind Codejack, some of us do this sort of stuff for a living, you obviously don't.

[Nathiel Surefire]

Keep in mind one of the problems currently in the game is that since the server authentication code isn't fully written yet, hitting targets is a combination of both your own ping and your specific target's ping (dumb I know, the fix to ensure that only your connection was taken into account was supposed to go in last week but they ended up having some problems with it before they could roll it out, it was removed from the patch notes). Thus, your ping might be fine (50 or so), but if your target's ping is 250 or so you'll have to deal with lag firing for a target between 200 and 300 ping. Considering this changes with every individual mech you shoot in the game, there is currently no way of consistantly telling whether the problem is with your connection or with your target's unless yours is really truly bad (and therefore get really wierd results when you try to correlate the data with your own connection).

Codejack, on 15 January 2013 - 12:51 PM, said:

If they do that, then it is SERIOUSLY hosed; what happens if, like myself, the person is on cable internet and the ping will vary significantly over the course of any 5 minute period? It will permanently be off.

If your ping (quality of connection) varies that wildly over the course of a few seconds then you'll never get a truly reliable server authenticated experience no matter how good the game server's netcode is to begin with (but you should be able to get rather close). Client side authentication for time stamps comes with the problems you mentioned, which is why we're trying to avoid it. Various algorithms are capable of sorting out exactly when a ping rises and falls and use it to piece together the exact order of times of events, but it's a matter of developing a good enough one capable of doing this to an acceptable level.

Codejack, on 15 January 2013 - 12:51 PM, said:

But the client can alter the timestamp, and if it's that easy to figure out how it is calculating it, then reversing that is easy, too.

Using the proposed topology I offered, it may prove difficult to do this that confers an advantage to the person manipulating their ping. Purposefully increasing their ping will cause the information to look like it happened a few seconds ago, but it will have reached the server a few seconds later anyway. Thus, it is up to the netcoder to produce a strong enough algorithm to properly handle situations where a person's ping suddenly rises and falls.

Codejack, on 15 January 2013 - 12:51 PM, said:

No. No. No, no, no, no, no. N-O. No. N. O. Super-slow motion: Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

I just stopped you here because you obviously haven't had the problem. I can have 50 ping and the worst lag ever, or 100 ping and it plays OK.

Ping has nothing to do with it.

Had you kept reading, I mentioned three other things that can cause these problems that are directly related to netcode (too large packet size, packet drop and missing information in packets). Time lag (not FPS) can also come from the network (netcode related), your client (though rare, so I'll ignore this for now), and server overstress (happens most often during peak playing times), so sometimes the lag you see might not be coming from the netcode at all, but the game server not processing the game information fast enough. Although it might not be true in your case, for other players ping is the majority factor for game lag, which is why people talk about it so much.

Edited by Nathiel Surefire, 15 January 2013 - 01:27 PM.