[SUGGESTION] Discrimination against HPBs

There is never a lack of alternatives, they could read a book or do something useful with their life. HPBs are just not supported by Xonotic's netcode and result in one or more people suffering, which shouldn't be the idea of playing a video game.

I propose genocide.

That's a little drastic don't you think? lol Sadly the only real solution to this that I can see is for Xonotic to gain more popularity in the region in question or at least in areas near it. Unless of course, someone can somehow make the gameplay at 300+ just as lag free as it is at 50.

I propose genocide.

What is wrong with you people..

I propose genocide.

What is wrong with you people..

My sense of humor, I guess. I was just responding to your message that I felt was a bit extreme and over the top ("suffer", really?). This was meant as a joke. I don't wish to contribute anything more to the discussion because it is apparently too polarized to be useful.

What is wrong with you people..

What's that supposed to mean?

My sense of humor, I guess. I was just responding to your message that I felt was a bit extreme and over the top ("suffer", really?). This was meant as a joke. I don't wish to contribute anything more to the discussion because it is apparently too polarized to be useful.

Yeah sure. I have to assume you weren't joking because violent videogames make you into a bad person...

Why does this wrapping thing happen? What's the net code?

In Teeworlds for example, player's movement is computed both on the server and the client: the server determines what the player's character will actually do and the client tries to predict the server's state it with its own copy of movement code. Server occasionally sends back the actual position of the player (so if the player is slowed down by a grenade shockwave, the client can acknowledge that). Even if you have high (but stable) ping in Teeworlds, you'll only notice that your weapons fire with a delay: controls will respond immediately. Other clients get the server's state of the player, so should the player lag, their character won't wrap or otherwise disrupt the game - it'll just lose control (it'll move like if the player still held the same control they held just before the lag started).

Red Eclipse uses another approach: all entities are client controlled: the trajectories of the projectiles you fire, the movement of your character are computed by your computer. This opens the possibility for easy cheating (speed hacks, super-weapons hacks), but offers a truly lagless experience. You can play with pings 250, 300 without even noticing it. Maybe Xonotic could include an option to do this? We'll need a lot of moderation, but it'll allow us to have a server that any player from any country can play without region segregation. It would be very good for Xonotic, as the player base is still very small and it's hard to find a server that both has satisfactory ping and has players in it.

Why does this wrapping thing happen? What's the net code?

In Teeworlds for example, player's movement is computed both on the server and the client: the server determines what the player's character will actually do and the client tries to predict the server's state it with its own copy of movement code. Server occasionally sends back the actual position of the player (so if the player is slowed down by a grenade shockwave, the client can acknowledge that). Even if you have high (but stable) ping in Teeworlds, you'll only notice that your weapons fire with a delay: controls will respond immediately. Other clients get the server's state of the player, so should the player lag, their character won't wrap or otherwise disrupt the game - it'll just lose control (it'll move like if the player still held the same control they held just before the lag started).

Red Eclipse uses another approach: all entities are client controlled: the trajectories of the projectiles you fire, the movement of your character are computed by your computer. This opens the possibility for easy cheating (speed hacks, super-weapons hacks), but offers a truly lagless experience. You can play with pings 250, 300 without even noticing it. Maybe Xonotic could include an option to do this? We'll need a lot of moderation, but it'll allow us to have a server that any player from any country can play without region segregation. It would be very good for Xonotic, as the player base is still very small and it's hard to find a server that both has satisfactory ping and has players in it.

We have clientside prediction. It's controlled by the cvar cl_movement, try it on a laggy server sometime.

I'm not too sure why Xonotic high pingers "skip around" (I don't recall ever seeing such a thing back in Nexuiz) because all movement is done serverside and the client predicts its own position as well as what the servers sends to it.

Based on the way it feels, Teeworlds does prediction the same way Xonotic does, except for weapons. You sometimes get killed by a shot that did not hit you, and your own shots are visibly delayed. In Xonotic, AFAIK, there's a weapon antilag system for hitscan that keeps track of what the laggy client sees to alleviate the aiming inaccuracy caused by lag.

I also don't know how Red Eclipse would manage input from laggy players and send that to other players. Shouldn't that cause choppiness for people who play against high pingers, by definition?

Disclaimer: I haven't played Xonotic in a while and I obviously don't fully understand its antilag as I can't explain the reported "skipping" behaviour.

Shouldn't that cause choppiness for people who play against high pingers, by definition?

It only happens when other player's connection is unstable, if it has high ping but is stable, there's no choppiness.

But how can the server predict the client-generated movement and send reliable information to the other clients when it hasn't yet received the high pinger's coordinates?

I don't see how you can have it both ways by providing both the high pinger and the other players with a smooth experience. One of them has to lag behind, no matter what.

It only happens when other player's connection is unstable, if it has high ping but is stable, there's no choppiness.

So it's more likely to happen due to packetloss and/or delayed packets. That's what I'd say, too, from playing with wireless network in the beginning - almost unplayable because of ~2% packetloss. Now with cable, even if I have a rather high ping (say ~100), I don't notice any choppiness.

Ah, the polarity!

I'm sorry lunatix didn't like my response, but I felt incredulous about his request that I get off because he wanted exclusive use of the server and thought using my ping as a reason was also a bit of a lame justification.

Nobody worry, flimflam has been told to get out of the tree house plenty of times before

To clarify, I have no issues with a server that is set up specifically to boot HPBs, provided they're taken off the server list or are at least given a notification if they try to join that they're not allowed to play there. (Although, what do you set the ping cutoff to... 150, 200... 300? What counts as a HPB? A red number?)

Well i stumbled to this thread by accident , otherwise I should have replied earlier.Maybe there should be and auto message when someone's nick is mentioned .

Anyways to the point without reading all the responses, I apologize but do not have time to do so , I feel it is required for me to respond at least to the opening argument of this post.

rad dj flimflam there was no discrimination due to high ping or whatever else against you by my part . The reason I kicked you was that I felt you wanted to start an argument and I did not have the patience for it.

I might misunderstood the "Are you fucking kidding me" part of you reply .Certaingly you have misunderstood my requests at that day .

Let me explain :

I usually waited (past tense cause I have stopped playing Xonotic since that day ) patiently for the OK server to be empty and play speed caping.That day this happened at around 6 am my time .Obviously your time was different. Now people have the perfectly reasonable tendency to join a server that is not empty , which is what you did that day .If the server is empty no one connects to it as happens most of the times and can easily be seen if you monitor the server.

Once you did i requested you twice using the word please that I am not actually playing ,so maybe the reason that drew you in the first place to connect is not going to happen , because I was not going to fight you ,so please find another server .I then suggested that even if I did your ping is way too high for it to have any meaning for us to battle .Which was also misunderstood by you ...maybe my English is bad and texting in game usually is not so analytical as in here for example.

After those requests you replied the way you did and in conjuction with the fact that you were holding the flag I perceived it badly as you wanted to start an argument.

I apologize but at my 7 am I was grumpy .

As many of players know me I did not kick people,unless they swear other players -teamshoot - say racist stuff and etc and always after warning. I usually leave the server when more than two players join to play CTF .That is what the server is there for afterall .

Anyway again I apologize if I made you feel bad or anyhting , I hope I epxlained the situation somewhat , at least my point of view and hope you continue to play and push the spread of the xonotic community at your country .

After all ,we all have been kicked at some point for bigger or less reasons , me included.


Cheers

Nobody worry, flimflam has been told to get out of the tree house plenty of times before

I hear you, comrad!

Hi lunatix, thanks for your response. I understand completely how meaning is lost via text. It's all good. It just so happened to be the straw that broke the camel's back for me, as I said I've been kicked a number of times with ping cited as the reason, and it just made me mad.

I was not aware that I was holding the flag, than again I have gained notoriety for that reason

Why does this wrapping thing happen? What's the net code?

In Teeworlds for example, player's movement is computed both on the server and the client: the server determines what the player's character will actually do and the client tries to predict the server's state it with its own copy of movement code. Server occasionally sends back the actual position of the player (so if the player is slowed down by a grenade shockwave, the client can acknowledge that). Even if you have high (but stable) ping in Teeworlds, you'll only notice that your weapons fire with a delay: controls will respond immediately. Other clients get the server's state of the player, so should the player lag, their character won't wrap or otherwise disrupt the game - it'll just lose control (it'll move like if the player still held the same control they held just before the lag started).

Red Eclipse uses another approach: all entities are client controlled: the trajectories of the projectiles you fire, the movement of your character are computed by your computer. This opens the possibility for easy cheating (speed hacks, super-weapons hacks), but offers a truly lagless experience. You can play with pings 250, 300 without even noticing it. Maybe Xonotic could include an option to do this? We'll need a lot of moderation, but it'll allow us to have a server that any player from any country can play without region segregation. It would be very good for Xonotic, as the player base is still very small and it's hard to find a server that both has satisfactory ping and has players in it.

I have a technical point.

The shooter should have authority over its own projectiles. If you shoot someone, your client registers a hit, and the server and target say there's no hit, then the hit should occur. As a practical example, note that dodging is mostly random, whereas shooting is mostly skill. If projectiles are resolved by the target, then the extra precision is meaningless. The target doesn't care if some misses and hits are swapped because it's usually not because the target did anything well or poorly. But the shooter is annoyed if misses and hits are swapped, because the shooter has full control. Missing and hitting is direct feedback on the shooter's skill, and it's good to keep it accurate.

Not only that, but position is often relative. If the target is running 1 meter ahead or behind, it doesn't matter too much - as long as the client clicks on the target accurately.

I believe that this model is widely adopted today in shooters and shooter-like games. Halo Reach has a slightly different model that has much of the same results, but I think theirs is inferior (it's far more complex to implement and has some funny behaviors). Halo sacrifices a bit of accuracy for a bit of cheating prevention. Other than that, I can't think of a single recently published commercial shooter that doesn't follow the model I outlined above.

Motion can be resolved through a different mechanism, or not. It's less important.

Cheating prevention is "easy" since most of the work is already done: simply determine whether actions are plausible. "Did that bullet really go anywhere near me?" The existing implementation allows this to be tested and verified by anyone. Then, cheating requires the cheater to do almost all the same work that he would normally do (i.e. implement an aimbot).

Cheating prevention is "easy" since most of the work is already done: simply determine whether actions are plausible. "Did that bullet really go anywhere near me?" The existing implementation allows this to be tested and verified by anyone. Then, cheating requires the cheater to do almost all the same work that he would normally do (i.e. implement an aimbot).

So if I understand your technical point correctly, the client is in full control of whether hits are reported and the server should trust it. And cheating prevention is left as an "easy" exercise to the reader.

More seriously, I understand that you're describing a more advanced clientside prediction, but the server still checks the plausibility of shots. We already have this sort of thing for hitscan weapons where the server tries to see whether the client successfully shot a lagged version of its target (i.e. checks the plausibility of the shot as reported by the client). I don't know how difficult the implementation is, but I'm sure it becomes more complex for non-hitscan weapons that are subject to movement physics themselves.

Clientside predicts nothing; all prediction is removed for hits. The client just looks at where the client thinks the target is, not caring about what the server thinks, or what the target thinks. Then the client reports any hits, and everyone accepts it.

For example, with a rocket, you'd say "my rocket exploded 3 meters below you, dealing X damage and imparting Y force". Then the target accepts the X damage and adjusts its velocity to accommodate the Y force. No extra movement physics are involved, despite the rocket being non-hitscan. And there's no prediction added.

The goal is to reduce lag where it matters (shooting). Then, this lag is moved to where it doesn't matter (dodging).

As a second example, suppose that lag is in the 1000ms range, and fluctuating from 500-1500ms. Everyone is teleporting like crazy. In your client, you see someone appear in the middle of your screen, and you click on him. Boom, he's dead. No prediction happens. It's very playable even up to 400ms (in other games, at least). In S4, a person with 15 ping is usually indistinguishable from someone with 250 ping, for most purposes.

Right, "easy". From what I understand of the current code (limited to information from this thread), you could run the two networking models side by side and check the target's distance to the reported hit. In the rocket example, the server could say, "based on the already-implemented prediction model, the true hit was 3 meters away from the reported hit, so I'll accept the client's word for it". Accuracy is not important, because all this is meant to prevent is a client that only sends out hit packets. An aimbot would defeat any networking model used.

At the moment, I don't think cheating is an issue because xonotic's playerbase is small anyway. You could leave out the anti-cheat entirely until somebody started cheating; simply knowing that the anti-cheat is implementable is good enough.

that's such an exploitable system it's not even funny

At the moment, I don't think cheating is an issue because xonotic's playerbase is small anyway. You could leave out the anti-cheat entirely until somebody started cheating; simply knowing that the anti-cheat is implementable is good enough.

I do not agree. Cheating immediately becomes an issue as soon as it is made easy. So essentially you suggest to remove anti-cheat just to put it immediately back in - I'd say better go for a proper implementation of antilag right from the start, and the current antilag system is pretty good as far as I can tell.

I haven't come across even a single hacker (who isn't a developer) in Xonotic during my ~2.5 years of active playing. Aimbots and autotriggers can be noticed easily. I spend a lot of time in Instagib servers where you would arguably bump into one most likely first, but I haven't seen any. If someone's wallhacking.. I just don't believe it would make any real difference on a game where all decent players got their 'arena sonars' embedded into their instinct and experience anyway. If it does make difference (on pub servers or especially pickups), then we'll find out about it fast, which is one of the perks of small communities like this. Nexuiz was apparently full of wallhackers and I never even knew about it until someone told me here just recently, that's how bad you end up playing when you don't practice your guts.

This thread seems to have gone onto a different tack of trying to fix the ping issue, but in reality I think it isn't technically feasible with our current global infrastructure. It will be awesome at some point in the future when backwater countries like Australia fix their shit and continents and whatnot are connected by much fatter fibers which entend to the end users, but I imagine this will take many decades and is more of a political issue. *snore* as it has become in au esp. with our new gubment.

I am glad to report though that I am moving in a month's time to a place (one of the few small areas of this country) that has recently installed infrastructure to support 100Mbit FTTH internet connection! To put that into perspective, until very recently this was unheard of in this country and only a tiny fraction of the population is currently covered by it. The gubment is arguing to change the plan to other alternatives and drag us straight back down to a technological 3rd world level... but they can't take back what they already installed. Ha!

Eager to see how this affects my ping levels nationally and internationally
On a closely related note, I am considering putting up a dedicated Xonotic server using this connection, or offering somebody else access to do so. PM me if interested.

-flampster

woah, pantsflimfam! haven't seen you in a while