GameAmp: I may be crazy, but newnet must...

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ep1taph

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I may be crazy, but newnet must...

Newnet was embraced as some kind of savior to the community, bringing together players all accross the North American continent. There was even speculation of a unified European and American community. This wasn't to be, of course, but people can dream!

Having played on the beta's of the antilag code, and plenty on the final 1.6(a) version, I've determined that it is still rather infantile. Don't get me wrong, I commend Lotus for this amazing tool. I do not believe it should be part of UTComp. As a standalone antilag mutator, I believe it could serve it's purpose just as well as an inclusion to the popular competition mod.

I'm sure we've all heard plenty of complaints about shots that hit other players visually on the client-side, but are not registered on the server-side, thus resulting in one of those strange graphical glitches. Perhaps i'm the only one who has noticed that there are a plethora of shots that don't hit visually on my client-side, but still result in a hitsound and damage being done to another player. When you are in the heat of play, it's not so easy to distinguish these quick and fascinating anomalies. Recently I started sorting demos, and it became glaringly apparent that the occurence of these misnomers was by far more frequent than I had imagined. Working on a movie, I realized that many of my shots just looked like crap due to the graphical inconsistencies.

Playing on antilagged servers is quite different. I was never, and am still not, very paranoid with newnet messing up the game balance. Epic did that well in the first place by making too many weapons extraneously strong. Antilag just makes them all that much stronger. Just today, I decided that I would try going back to the normal ping without the assistance of antilag. To my surprise, it wasn't that hard to adjust. I stopped getting those nasty visually inept shots and I had a lot of fun.

(If you read this to hear, you're pretty hardcore!)

In a nutshell, this is my plead to the UTComp team to consider making the antilag code a seperate mutator and to remove it from the next UTComp release. We all were told about the detrimental effects of the antilag at the very start, such as corner oddities, visual estrangements and erratic jitter from minor packetloss. I suppose another option would be to improve the base-code and have some of the problems omitted and removed.

I appreciate UTComp, the UTComp team, and I have a high respect for Lotus, who I got to meet and spend a little time with at a LAN just a few weeks ago. I know this may sound like the most retarted idea ever to grace the mind of an internet goer to some, but I had to share my stance and get it out.

07/07/05 00:35

dnx3

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Re: I may be crazy, but newnet must...

As far as the shots not hitting visually on your screen, but registering hitsounds and doing damage is concerned, we've noticed this way back in the very early alphas. We then spent a ridiculous amount of hours trying to figure out what was causing it, and ended up realizing that its actually a bug in UT itself, and happens just as much without Enhanced Netcode... What happens is, when you move your move quickly, and then fire before you stop moving on the target, (which good players will do quite frequently, I'll call them flick shots) the shot you take will not always go precisely where your crosshair is.

In our testing, we've found some extreme cases where the shot went as high as 5000 units off. An entire 360 turn in UT2004 is 64000 units wide, so that means the shot was 28 degrees off. Obviously, this is an extreme case, but there are plenty of situations where this happens, and is very noticeable at long ranges. (In fact, when UT2004 came out, a whole lot of us were wondering why our long range lg/shock flick shots werent hitting half as much as in UT2003... It all made sense when we did that testing almost a year later. The current theory is that its part of the bandwidth optimisations that were made to handle very large player/projectile counts on large outdoor maps.)

Anyway, the reason why you dont notice when you're not playing with Enhanced Netcode is because the shot itself will be drawn off-target. Therefore, when it happens online, you'll just beleive you had a small ping spike or something along those lines. (which in the ends looks identical) You should be able to notice it on lan, however. Of course, looking at a demo afterwards will not help whatsoever, simply because the shot will also be drawn off the crosshair in the demo, and you have no way to tell when the player pressed his fire key. So we assume thats why it hasnt been considered a widespread problem. But it's there.

When we figured that out, Lotus wrote some correction code, to try and minimize those off-target shots from happening. However, I do not think the code was kept, for balance reasons. (Obviously, if those flick shots are hitting as accurately as they should be, as opposed to the default behavior in UT2004, that would significantly increase the power of the affected weapons.) Plus, it didn't work flawlessly anyway. The theory there is that the netcode changes that caused the innacuracy aren't in the unrealscript code, but in the native engine code, and therefore aren't fixable. We can only try and hack our way around it.

Anyway, if you don't like enhanced netcode, I'll tell you what I told other people who think the same: it's there as an option, and it's off by default. So don't use it. Altough in this case, it might require you trying to convince the leagues who decided to use it to stop doing so.

07/07/05 00:59

Dirty_Tampon

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Re: I may be crazy, but newnet must...

I think netcode has been a wonderful thing. It allows us all to play on a much more even playing field. Unfortunately their are some downsides, but you have to expect that. I think all in all it has been a nice addition.

07/07/05 08:41

dawgpound

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Re: I may be crazy, but newnet must...

Well, it's already off by default like dnx3 said which is different from other features that are default on like brightskins/hitsounds. You'd have to convince GGL, TWL, and whatever tournaments that will be run from here to not use it :| If they wanted to continue using it they just wouldn't upgrade to the newest UTComp if it was removed (many Euro leagues were still using 1.5a not long ago).

It's not enough to succeed, others must fail.

07/07/05 09:00

xfoo

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Re: I may be crazy, but newnet must...

The new netcode is great.

Although I do find it rather annoying that ever since I came back to UT every single player can shoot a 45% LG and a 40% shock while camping the top of Rankin ;)

07/07/05 11:11

dcrampz

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Re: I may be crazy, but newnet must...

I just don't bother getting angry about weird shots anymore. Newnet is the only reason I can still play.

07/07/05 11:40

ep1taph

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Re: I may be crazy, but newnet must...

I think a game is in a sad state of affairs when an overwhelming majority of the people who play it would rather play with a multitude of graphical inconsistencies rather than play with a non-lagged ping.

dnx3, what you described was something I hadn't heard much about. Even if it is the case, I still don't see how it makes it alright, considering the insane amount of inconsistencies in gameplay. Living with a few dud rockets/flak/nades a match was difficult enough for me. I'm a WYSIWYG person, I can't help it. (For those who don't know the acronym: What You See Is What You Get)

Why, exactly, did Lotus/dnx3 choose to call it "Enhanced Netcode" or "NewNet"? You just unlagged the system, and did not actually change the netcode at all... did you? Perhaps you had plans to change it in the future to alleviate some of the issues with this version.

Bottom line is that people have grown accustomed to their insane accuracies with the antilag, and giving it up is nearly an impossibility for them. On the competitive level, antilag has been adopted, and we all know how hard it is to change something with accepted competition settings. Very rarely do games adopt antilag systems due to the problems, inconsistencies, and change it causes to the game as a whole. DM based games hardly ever do, for obvious reasons. I suppose the community was so desperate for something, that this came as the answer.

[edit] Yes, it is an option. Though playing without it is pretty much a handicap when you're playing someone who IS using it.

***THIS POST HAS BEEN EDITED***

07/07/05 12:43

xfoo

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Re: I may be crazy, but newnet must...

I would rather play with a netcode that hit where my cursor was pointing and having it graphically incorrect.

Either way, the graphics in UT2k4 don't match up normally anyways (hello pulse gun :angryface:).

The real solution is to change the weapon damage, which won't happen. (but think of the opportunity you would have if you swapped the damage of the weapons, you could get rid of the shield gun at the same time!).

07/07/05 15:06

dnx3

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Re: I may be crazy, but newnet must...

epitath, while I understand the fact that you don't like graphical innacuracies, the thing is, the missed shots that hit and/or dead on shots that missed would happen anyway. The only difference between enhanced netcode and regular ut2004, in that regard, is that you notice it more, and you have something/someone easy to blame when it happens. There's nothing we can do about it.

We called it enhanced netcode because we felt like it was a name people would immediately understand, as opposed to "predictive weapon firing" or whatever it would be that would be more accurate. This is clearly explained in the readme.

The netcode setting is a client option, but it is also a *server* option, which makes everything perfectly fair. Just press F5, voting, UTComp settings, Enhanced Netcode: Disabled, Call vote. Everyone will then be forced off.

[Rant Mode]
Fact is, predicted weapon fire is pretty much standard in fps games nowadays, with the few exceptions being hardcore DM games. (Quake, Doom, Unreal, Painkiller) In basically everything but those games, players have found that the minor visual inconsistencies you get are irrelevant compared to the fact that you don't have to deal with leading targets. (And constantly adjusting on different servers based on pings) We think so too, hence why we created Enhanced Netcode. But we had no intention, and still have no intention, of forcing it on anybody, hence why we made it optional, and off by default. If you don't agree with the decisions your community took, it might be more productive to try and convince them to change their minds, instead of trying to convince us to remove a feature that just about everyone on a continent is using.
[/Rant Mode]

07/07/05 19:12

Saito

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Re: I may be crazy, but newnet must...

Pardon the rather brief side track on just the competitive rules.

GGL chose to use newnet because it was the most logical decision at the time for two very good reasons.

1. Currently the vast majority of the community was for using it.
2. There is no possible way to create a fair server situation between west and east players in this game.

Perhaps some of that logic was wrong but the fact is that newnet did remove a ton of server griping that typically plagues events. In a perfect world we would all be on lan but that’s not the case.

Now obviously GGL isn’t going to change up the rules in the middle of the event. However this doesn’t mean that newnet is automatically going to stay around. When the next GGL events roll around there will be chance to take another look at things. If it would better not to use newnet, then I’m sure it won’t be used.

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07/07/05 20:05

ep1taph

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Re: I may be crazy, but newnet must...

dnx3: first, epitath is not a word, but epitaph is, and that is my name. No hard feelings about it, though.

Second, you claim the inconsistencies exist even without the antilag... yet if you play without it the lg/shock shots that hit/miss but perform the opposite of what is visually represented somehow don't occur anymore. Just because the game has the built in error with quick movements doesn't mean it's alright to have the graphics destroyed by it just to use antilag.

All of the games you listed that do not use antilag (aka hardcore dm games) are just like UT. UT is a DM game. Antilag was adopted in very few games, mostly team-based tactical shooters where there are spray weapons and any inconsistency is impossible to realize. Their unlagged systems are also by far more advanced than what is included in UTComp. Neil Toronto's unlagged comes to mind, which is what many Q3 players used and what was adapted into ET competitive play. CS:S has ping compensation also.

Why do you feel antilag needs to be included with utcomp? Why cannot it be a seperate project and mutator. This would allow for changes on UTComp and improvements on the antilag system to come seperately and make each project more managable.

[edit] Yes, i'm quite aware it is clearly an option. But with the whole community parading their servers and leagues with it enabled, and EVERYONE enabling it client side... you can't really think being one person on an 8 person server that isn't using it could be truly fair.

I'm just angry that my choice to have my shots concise and not use the antilag puts me at a disadvantage to other players.

***THIS POST HAS BEEN EDITED***

07/07/05 21:31

dnx3

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Re: I may be crazy, but newnet must...

ep1taph, while it is true that you won't get the visual inconsistencies from the hits/misses that end up being reversed while playing UT2004, you DO get the same bug happening. As discussed earlier, the bug probably cannot be fixed via unrealscript, and we can't hack our way around it either: the shots are drawn before the client knows whether it'll happen or not.

Basically, think of it as Enhanced Netcode telling you "Ha hah, you really hit, but UT2004 screwed you over." Or the other way around if you missed and it hit. In which case it's usually easier to accept.

While I understand why you might be put off with it, evidentally a majority of the players in the NA community decided that dealing with those minor visual glitches were worth it if they didnt have to deal with trying to leading shots, especially on high pings. Obviously, Europe disagreed... (Mostly due to the fact that they already play with much lower pings than us in the first place, and have much less of a need for ping compensation than we do.)

The reason why it's included in UTComp is for simplicity alone. I mean, technically UTComp could be split into two dozen different mutators to provide different features, and server admins could only install those they want. But it would be an horrible, horrible mess... It's much easier from an admin point of view to just grab the latest utcomp and then disable what you don't like/want via webadmin and/or server ini's. That was the only logic behind including Enhanced Netcode, or anything else we added, in UTComp. The goal has always been to make it easy to deploy. The best example here would be mapvote: there already is map voting in UT2004, but it's significantly easier to just let UTComp deal with it instead of trying to configure epic's. (In fact, in the pre-competitive-mod days of UT2004, this was a major problem, with several otherwise-good competitive servers ruined by not having mapvote properly configured, effectively making them unusable without admin access.)

Had the feedback been overwhelmingly negative about Enhanced Netcode when we did the 1.6 betas, we wouldn't have included it. Had it been overwhelmingly positive, it would have been included and enabled by default. Considering that opinions were split, we decided to include it but disable it by default.

Anyway, as I said, it all comes down to most players over here deciding the visual innacuracies were worth having, if it meant not having to lead shots. If you manage to convince them otherwise - and I would suggest starting with the leagues that standardized on its usage - that would mean there wouldn't really be any support for it, and therefore no reason to keep it. Then, we'd consider removing it. But in the meantime, there's way too many people enjoying and using it for us to even consider taking it out.

07/07/05 23:45

ep1taph

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Re: I may be crazy, but newnet must...

Strangely enough, this "easier to deploy single-package" concept was pissed on by people when Wormbo announced his attempt at a competitive mutator, UTPlus. He proposed anticheat, ping compensation, all the normal voting options and brightskins/hitsounds to boot. He even made a super-awesome demo system. The response was "you stink. you are trying to monopolize, make seperate muts!"

I doubt you ever said something like that, but competition mods rarely come with antilag as part of them. Their aim is the competitive environment, not the change of the gameplay, and antilag clearly changes the gameplay on a much deeper level than brightskins or a hitsound does.

I've taken motions toward leagues and have made contacts, I'm glad you discussed it intelligently with me, and I've learned a bit in the process. I hope the good work on UTComp will continue, and once again, thanks for everything until now.

07/08/05 00:07

Saito

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Re: I may be crazy, but newnet must...

Thread derail #2 please

Wormbo caught shit because antiTCC sucks. Hell I can pass it, so can others. His protection is worthless vs a decent hook and it lags. Hence to anybody with a remotely small brain all his products suck more ass than dm-trainingday. If the same product, had been made by a person other than wormbo it would have stood a chance.

Wormbo is the howdy doody of this this community.

Congrats on his effort, but his product sucks.

07/08/05 00:23

SubZero

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Re: I may be crazy, but newnet must...

about the mouse thing...if you use that option 'mouse acceleration threshold' and bump it up to 100 (which according to its description means max amounts of units of mouse movement BEFORE accel is applied), you can hit all the twitch shots you want...except it only was really worth it in instagib or crazy TDM games cuz its harder to aim at targets far off and make subtle adjustments in your aim without the boosted mouse movement. and of course you can't pull 180s and other large on-screen movements as easily as before. (and by twitch shots i mean a considerable amount of distance on the mousepad or like a 90+ degree angle twitch on your screen and still pinpoint accuracy.)

and i guess that means the default value of '0' for that field means everyone has mouse acceleration applied the instant they touch the mouse.

i mentioned this to lotus a while back...

perhaps you guys could check out the source code for what that function is all about.

and the standard for competitive mods are still OSP/CPMA for quake games...UTComp barely takes any liberties by comparison.

***THIS POST HAS BEEN EDITED***

07/09/05 17:08

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