question regarding lag/effects of lag...

[a-4-year-old]

So just now I was playing on the elite! onehitkills server (don't ask me why, it was a bad choice on my part.) I was playing, switching back and forth between m79 and barret, and i was shooting a lot of people, but they would not die. The hit detection was WAY off on that server, i had around 60 ping on that server.

Now i know what you are thinking; "Have a bad day? we don't care!" But I'm not done yet, so keep reading bub.

So, if it someone could enlighten me regarding the subject, why is hit detection such a  problem in this game, and does anybody know if it is being countered in 1.3.2? What is hit detection caused by, MM's infamous poor coding or serverside or clientside lags, or some other complicated stuff??

Discuss

[-Vis-]

I was in the server at the same time, and I was having no problems whatsoever. Just the usual hit/no kills you'd expect in most servers. I think it's just a combination of client lag and server lag, and sometimes packet loss.

[Mr. Domino]

The server is fine -- the !Elite servers are just U13 rentals which run the U13 games and this forum. The game lags just as every on-line game does when the overall population's ping is high, which results in some delayed reactions and hits. If it's happening as much as you say, then there is also the chance that your connection is the source of you problem despite what the game reports your ping as. Whenever I play any server as noticed most of my hits aren't impacting, I just exit and reboot the PC and modem. When I rejoin, I find the problem is gone.

I know the !EliteCTF servers have the ping kick set at 300, so it should autokick anyone lagging that bad. I suspect you just got annoyed with it more being on a one-hit server where every hit has to count. Lag can hurt one-hit weapons unfortunately. I know I get aggravated when my fully charged knife doesn't kill on Slicers and am left weaponless. It happens.

[-Vis-]

I should probably edit this into my previous post, but there were 2 people on the opposing team who had >100 ping, which is enough to cause some hit problems as it is. I was in u13 inf earlier and my ping was jumping between 66 and 100, and one guy kept complaining that I was laggy and that his hits didn't kill me. It doesn't take a lot of lag to cause this problem.

[a-4-year-old]

The server is fine -- the !Elite servers are just U13 rentals which run the U13 games and this forum. The game lags just as every on-line game does when the overall population's ping is high, which results in some delayed reactions and hits. If it's happening as much as you say, then there is also the chance that your connection is the source of you problem despite what the game reports your ping as. Whenever I play any server as noticed most of my hits aren't impacting, I just exit and reboot the PC and modem. When I rejoin, I find the problem is gone.

I know the !EliteCTF servers have the ping kick set at 300, so it should autokick anyone lagging that bad. I suspect you just got annoyed with it more being on a one-hit server where every hit has to count. Lag can hurt one-hit weapons unfortunately. I know I get aggravated when my fully charged knife doesn't kill on Slicers and am left weaponless. It happens.

I play on the soldatforums server and the u13 pubs without problem, i guess ill just stay clear of elite servers, i didn't have lag problems in games like call of duty that i was playing earlier, or any slowdown at all.

[ElephantEater]

Whenever I play on the GameArena servers I have a ping of about 150 yet have NO lag problems whatsoever. No one ever shouts at me for lagging.

So yeah, sometimes when people complain of having a ping of >100 I just wonder 'what's wrong with that?' It's only when my ping goes about >300 when I start having problems.

[mar77a]

Originally posted in fractured soldat forums

I kinda got lazy in the mid but it's ok!

- So, what is this about?
It's a small guide that will help you understand the basics of gameplay on servers on which you get a ping around 200. It'll cover the technical aspects of it, as well as some suggestions to improve your performance on them. It is important to read the theory, since it'll help you understand the conclusions of this guide.

- What is the 'ping'
I won't use wikipedia or any manuals to write this, I'll just write what I think and what I have learned with time. Have you ever wondered at what speed do packets travel? How long does a packet take to reach it's destination and back? Well, that's where ping appears. Im not going to talk about the PING protocol or anything, just stating, again, what I think it is. We known, light travels at a speed of 300.000 kms~ per second, named with the letter C. So, what is the ping. It's the time a packet takes to reach a destination netcard and return (if it replies obviously). Since the speed of light is so fast, ping replies are offten measured in ms, miliseconds, according to the rule; 1 ms = 0.001 second. Soldat is no exception to ping and luckily for us, Michal Marcinkowski included our pings in real time (updated every half a second or so).

- More theory
So now we know that when we have a ping of "16" it's because the packets I am sending to the soldatserver are taking approximately 16 ms to return since I sent them. I think im getting it. So, the hole online playing thing is, everything you see has already happened and is beeing sent/received/seen by you. Even if your ping is 16, you never see anything REAL time. How does this affect my gameplay? Firstly, since soldat's network code is based on UDP, you can never really AFFIRM that what you are seeing has happened. Let me do a brief explanation here. The two most used protocols over the web are TCP/IP and UDP. How do they differ from each other? Simply put TCP/IP is slower because it uses different headers and structure to ensure that a packet has been received and that also, that it is not corrupted. On the other hand, UDP doesn't even establish a connection before sending packets, it just sends the packets and wishes them good luck. This is obviously faster but you can never tell for instance if a packet has arrived (unless you do complex code checking which isn't as effect and is usally slow). I think we can now move on to the gameplay.

- Gameplay, About soldiers & bullets
What have we learned so far? The things that I see have happend the value the of my ping in time before. For example, if I have a ping of 100 ms, the things that I see have happened...right, 0.1 seconds ago. That may now seem much but believe me, it's a lot when it comes to soldat. How can i explain it? 2 bullets out of 4 in an auto not hitting if the player is moving fast enough and you ARE seeing all or most of your bullets hit him. That's where our theory helps us. Since we know that what we are seeing IS NOT what really is there, we have to equip ourselves with our crystal ball and predict what will the player do in the next 100 ms! Got it now? So that's why you see the bullet barret go by, you see the blood, but your enemy doesn't die. What do we know now? The soldatserver is the only one that sees the things REAL time. This time is when packets from different players arrive, the server analyses the different possitions at that exact same moment and...your bullet went 2 mms above your enemy. If the server had detected a collision then it would send two packets, hypothetically: one to you sending: "you killed the guy" (Then your soldat client, will read this packet and show the "You killed X", increase in one your kills counter, etc. The other packet will be sent to your enemy, sending him the opposite. A good way to check for example that your ping is x-ms, is that the "You killed X" messages appear usually in that time. Just try joining a server with ping replies of about 300 ms (scroll down in the lobby).d

- Gameplay, About soldiers & bullets, part II
What is the challenge of high pings, and by high I mean, above 150 ms. You have to take the time to predict what your opposing player will do, because what you are seeing has happened some ms ago! The perfect example, you miss a Barret shot, and the player dies. Why? Because althought on YOUR screen he never touched the bullet, the server received a packet saying "a barret bullet is on location 21:23". The player was also found there and the 2 hypothetyial packets mentioned above are sent. The problem is, the packet which the server received saying that the ENEMY was on location 21:23 (or near), was received by you, nothing different, than 150 ms!

- Gameplay, Objects
Remember, not only players and bullets are delayed in your screen. Continuing with the above example, EVERYTHING that moves is delayed 150 ms on your screen. What does everything involve? Other objects, such as throwed weapons, flags, nades, medikits, bonuses, rambo bow, nade boxes, etc, etc, etc. Well, basically the same rules apply. Let's take the example of the knife first:
You throw a knife, miss, then kill the guy with your AUTO. You know where the knife has landed so go over that place and suddenly you realise you didn't pick up your knife. While you are braking to go back and get your knife, it appears in your screen: "Combat Knife". What's this all about? Hey, I won't explain everything all over again, but I think you can figure what has happened. Just the same thing happends with the flags, the dropped weapons, etc. But there's a special case.

- Gameplay, Nades
What makes nades so special that they need a different section? Well, the fact is, nades explode but only harm when the server decides so (which is when they really hit the player). Lets see an example, you are rushing out of the Bravo base on ctf_Laos, you're alting. Your opponent going low has killed you and you just respawned. You throw a nade at your enemy who is coming out of the low route. You get the "You killed John" message. The guy is effectively dead according to the server but you didn't see an explosion and you can still SEE the nade lying there in the ground. What has happened? The nade indeed collided with the enemy and killed him, according to the server. The server sent the two packets but it forgot one thing, thinking your client was responsible enough to do it (which he isn't because of the lag): to explode the nade before killing the guy. The damage is done and now you can abuse this. Go near the nade and watch it explode beside you. Your health won't lower because according to the server, there IS NO nade. But your client sees the explosion and kicks you out. You rush faster than usual, and you beat the guy low, with full health. Tricky, eh.

[jettlarue]

Well mar77a, that is very nice. Very true also. But when two people are not moving and I pummel my whole clip of mp5 bullets into him that is more than lag, it is hit detection and it is something that happens occasionally unless there is a glitch in server or something like that.

[Plonkoon]

Wow, mar77a.  Someone did their homework.      I usually dont have problems with hit detection, and when I do, I blame it on my spiking internet connection or the server.  And sure enough, whenever I'm having trouble making my bullets kill things, I look at the scoreboard and eiter my ping is skyrocketing or everyone's ping is high.  Then I'll just go to a new server.

[EnEsCe]

Uh guys, mar77a didnt write that... it was posted on the craptured forums, as the first line in his post says...

So, if it someone could enlighten me regarding the subject, why is hit detection such a  problem in this game, and does anybody know if it is being countered in 1.3.2? What is hit detection caused by, MM's infamous poor coding or serverside or clientside lags, or some other complicated stuff??

Well FYI, the hit bug has apparently been fixed in 1.3.2, the reason for it was something to do with angles and colliders. And its caused by both lag and MM's coding

[ElephantEater]

Thanks for the good news EnEsCe. What about chainsaw registering?

It's odd though, my shots definitely don't take a whole second and a half to register on people even though i have 150 ping. Oh wells, I've no complaints.

[Demonic]

It was posted by mar77a on Fractured forum in the first place, he just copied it here.

As enesce put, there's more to it than just lag - and it seems that there'll be far less unregistered hits in the new version.

[a-4-year-old]

Thanks for the good news EnEsCe. What about chainsaw registering?

It's odd though, my shots definitely don't take a whole second and a half to register on people even though i have 150 ping. Oh wells, I've no complaints.

a second and a half would be 1500 ping.

so dimentional analysis IS usefull

1.5 sec.  * 1 ping
               .001 sec.

1.5 sec.  * 1 ping
               .001 sec.
1.5*1 ping
.001
1500