135 replies to this topic

[Codejack]

Thontor, on 15 January 2013 - 01:22 PM, said:

Had a similar issue a few years back with my previous ISP. No matter the game. Terrible lag, warping... But my ping was fine.

Its definitely something between you and your ISP... Its packet loss, plain and simple.

I had them come out a half dozen times to try and find the problem and they just couldn't do it... Switched to a new ISP (from cable to DSL) and I haven't had a problem since.

No, every other game I play, including action-oriented MMOs with lag-sensitive mechanics, it fine. We went through this last week when I couldn't play for 4 days.

[PropagandaWar]

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.

Funny thing is I think all of us see it, but we don't start slamming devs for talking about the issue like you did. I take it buy your stance your gods gift to programmers and have solved every issue brought to you within a 24 hour time period? I also take it that you feel entitled to slam a persons (Groups) work which you did not have too or have not paid for? Seriously think some people need to take a break from MWO and go outside for a while.

Edited by PropagandaWar, 15 January 2013 - 01:35 PM.

[Codejack]

PropagandaWar, on 15 January 2013 - 01:27 PM, said:

Funny thing is I think all of us see it, but we don't start slamming devs for talking about the issue like you did. I take it buy your stance your gods gift to programmers and have solved every issue brought to you within a 24 hour time period? I also take it that you feel entitled to slam a persons (Groups) work which you did not have too or have not paid for? Seriously think some people need to take a break from MWO and go outside for a while.

"24 hours?!" This has been going on since closed beta!

[somedood]

Codejack, on 15 January 2013 - 12:41 PM, said:

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 ***?

Wow, way to illustrate your ignorance.

The server knows when it sends a message to the client, and when the client responds to the message. That is your latency, or ping. The server doesn't care what time the client says it is, just how long it took for the round trip relative to the server's time. Altering time on the client does nothing to the server's timestamps. He just explained how the system is being built to handle varying latency between clients since it wasn't built into Cryengine already.

So, no, it's not becuase "timestamps are easy to alter" that we have teleportation bad hit detection, but because clients don't about about other client's latency. Once these fixes are polished then it only ends up mattering what I see on my screen, not what the other guy is seeing on his.

You'll get further in life by following the golden rule. Sometimes throwing tantrums will get things done, but civility goes so much further.

[Doomstryke]

Don't forget most of the games you play servers are hosted in the states. This game is in Canada in Toronto. Your hops can vary day to day base on qos from the next hops down from your location. If it happens that your network trafic takes a route with a bad router that drops packets it will effect you differently then your neighboor that has trafic going a different route. Just cause you say one game works and another doesn't has nothing to do with the quality of you ISP. There is soooo much more to networking then just saying my ping says 50 so I'm good. Your ping sends one -many small packets that get through just fine. Game data packets might be all dropped by a router sitting in newyork should it happen to go that way. You have nooo control over it. do traceroutes to google for example and find that after 2 mintues your going to be takeing completly different routes to reach the same server. Same thing applies to games

[Jacmac]

Mazgazine1, on 15 January 2013 - 09:16 AM, said:

I have never heard this term used before for any online/offline games I have played. Have any other games employed this method of hit detection?

A lot of online games do this. One way to tell is when you die, it seemed as if you were "out of the woods", then a half second later, you're dead. You know you were taking a bunch of hits and hoped you would get clear. The hits stop and it seems like you're OK, then boom!

[Tasorin]

Thomas Dziegielewski, on 15 January 2013 - 09:29 AM, said:

Nothing really to do with movement. So no it does not cause the stutter. But you hit the nail on the head. The Physics state rewind moves all physics object back in time in order to do traces for weapons when they occurred on clients. I'm sure other titles have done this.

This is how bullets use to go around corners in PlanetSide.

Server side hit detection done at the time the user side client registered the firing of a weapon and the sustained rounds down range. It use to really pi$$ players off when you would die seconds after rounding a corner and taking cover. I believe that Tribes Ascend did a similar thing when they moved from the closed Alpha servers to the production Beta servers and moved hit detection from the user client side to the server client side and players were all b|_|tt hurt because they couldn't game the hit scan weapons anymore.

[Glucose]

Tasorin, on 15 January 2013 - 01:56 PM, said:

This is how bullets use to go around corners in PlanetSide.

Server side hit detection done at the time the user side client registered the firing of a weapon and the sustained rounds down range. It use to really pi$$ players off when you would die seconds after rounding a corner and taking cover. I believe that Tribes Ascend did a similar thing when they moved from the closed Alpha servers to the production Beta servers and moved hit detection from the user client side to the server client side and players were all b|_|tt hurt because they couldn't game the hit scan weapons anymore.

That's the problem I see.

Devs -- when you finally implement state rewinding, please let all the noobs know that they will likely see lasers shooting off to their sides, while being hit. Most games don't suffer from this visual artifact, but we have torso twisting and can see their shots come at us while traversing across their screen.

[Dakkath]

I need to pop in here and remind everyone to be civil towards one another and attack the post, but not attack the poster. Flaming and trolling are violations of the Code of Conduct. Please post in accordance with the CoC. We need to all place nice together in the sandbox or I will be forced to lock this thread.


Links for these:
http://mwomercs.com/conduct
http://mwomercs.com/...ting-etiquette/


Thanks for understanding.
-Dak

[RickySpanish]

It may go by a different name, but I know Valve did this with HL.

[pesco]

FrDrake, on 15 January 2013 - 11:36 AM, said:

Packets are generated at a point in time that can be included as timestamp data. I guess eventually someone could write a packet generator that gave false timestamps but I don't immediately see how that would give them an advantage.

You could backdate your shots so ballistic weapons would become hit-scan. If the server puts a sensible limit on how far you can backdate though, preferrably taking into account the backdating on your other messages (~> your ping), this should be spoiled, I think.

[Skyfaller]

Mazgazine1, on 15 January 2013 - 09:16 AM, said:

I have never heard this term used before for any online/offline games I have played. Have any other games employed this method of hit detection? It sounds like it would work really well, but I imagine there is a massive ton of network acrobatics to get it to work in realtime.

Is this why mechs bounce/stutter through eachother? The hit detection is seeing the collision from two different time frames and attempting to work it out?

Edit: ARGH! Title of post spelling fail...

hit detection is a problem with cryengine. Crysis has the exact same issue and it happens at exactly the same situations: when objects move at high speeds.

This system of hit detection is a band-aid attempt at countering the cryengine issue.

Just think on this for a moment: MMOs, particularly combat flight sims and space shooter games have been able to provide solid and reliable hit detection on objects moving at speeds insanely faster than the ones seen in MWO and in any other cryengine game. This has been true for the past 10 years.

Its not a technology approach problem. Its a cryengine problem. It cannot be fixed. Rather than slow down the mechs overall to match the cryengine limitations we get these ridiculous attempts which only end up ruining the game experience.

Edited by Skyfaller, 15 January 2013 - 02:43 PM.

[Rokuzachi]

Blame Codejack all you want for 'running the dev off', but I've seen a lot of devs put up with much worse and still keep a smile on their face, instead of saying 'you've insulted me and now I'm taking my toys and going home'.

I don't expect much maturity from an online community (ever), but I'd like to think I can expect a certain amount of grace and maturity under fire from industry professionals that interact with the community.

[ElLocoMarko]

Thontor, on 15 January 2013 - 09:55 AM, said:

Nice, thanks for the link

If anyone is curious about this "state re-winding" go to the "Lag Compensation" section of that first link.

"... Layer on top of this the unrealistic player physics models that most FPS games use, where player's can turn instantaneously and apply unrealistic forces to create huge accelerations at arbitrary angles and you'll see that the extrapolation is quite often incorrect... "

See - MWO physics win! Now make it so.

[ElLocoMarko]

Skyfaller, on 15 January 2013 - 02:41 PM, said:

...
hit detection is a problem with cryengine. Crysis has the exact same issue and it happens at exactly the same situations: when objects move at high speeds.

This system of hit detection is a band-aid attempt at countering the cryengine issue.

And PGI is working on it. If you read the dev blogs on the net code you will see lots of mention of "refactoring". Refactoring is what you do when a rewrite just isn't feasible. It's the next best thing to starting from scratch and I commend them for it.

[ElLocoMarko]

And if we can get back in the vicinity of the original question... I've read the linked articles.
If a game implements state-rewind... does it cut perceived lag shield in half?

So in the game we are playing now. I pop off a laser and a network packet goes out. It takes its sweet time getting to the server and when it arrives there it is applied to the game state at the moment of arrival. So if my latency is 500 ms, then... in the eyes of the server I pulled the trigger 500 ms after I think I did.

With game-state-rewind: The server receives my data packet and then applies it to the world from as it existed based on my time stamp, 500 ms in the past. It then applies those effects forward and will inform all the other connected clients of the new state of being. Without rewind you had to predictively shoot where the target was going to be in the future. With game-state-rewind it is still true... but the amount is dependent upon how recently your client updated from a server packet. If the client just updated 2 ms ago then you aim right at it. If your client hasn't gotten a server packet for 500 ms then that is the delay... So your lag aim will change from
No game-state-rewind: Latency + Time_Since_Server_Update.
Game-state-rewind: Time_Since_Server_Update.

Time_Since_Server_Update would be a value from 0 to Latency with a nice linear function.
So if Latency is a constant 500 ms... Old system would be 500 + (0 to 500) and new system is simply (0-500).

Now someone who knows stuff... Fix it (my math)


What in game effects will we see?

Edited by ElLocoMarko, 16 January 2013 - 07:36 AM.

[Taizan]

In this pretty old ( but possibly still valid) article from 1998 a Valve dev talks about latency vs. ping and how frame rates / tic rates influence the game.

I'm just wondering as my latency/ping usually increase by 2-3x during combat (where I know my framerate is dropping from steady 45-50 to around 25-30) if this also plays a role for MWO, knowing if this is an additional issue might help some people (me included) enjoying the game a bit more.

[The Cheese]

Thomas Dziegielewski, on 15 January 2013 - 09:29 AM, said:

But you hit the nail on the head. The Physics state rewind moves all physics object back in time in order to do traces for weapons when they occurred on clients.

This might be reading through hope-coloured glasses, but does that mean that when the netcode is sorted out, I'll be able to shoot at a mech rather than where it will be in a second or so, even with 250+ ping?

[HC Harlequin]

Red squirrel, on 15 January 2013 - 11:09 AM, said:

With server side auth. players might create lag on purpose to get an advantage?

All that will do is make your game worse.
When your enemy shoots you they are shooting the target they are given by the server. So if their lag is 50ms they only have to worry about the 50ms latency. It doesn't matter what your latency is. Even if it's 250ms or somesuch, your enemy still only needs to hit a 50ms hit box. Their client gets a target from their server connection, they shoot the server connection target, the server connection gets their shooting data at their latency and applies it to the server target. Your ping has nothing to do with it.

[Dirk Le Daring]

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

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

Thanks for taking the time to explain a few things. I learned more from your responses.