SRB2CS: With new Match/CTF netcode! (BETA 5)

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Love this idea. However, I tried it out recently in a match netgame and it seemed much more chaotic and random, probably because of the delay that occurrs when you actually hit someone with a ring to the time it actually shows them getting hit. I had a ping of about 400 and it felt as though rings were spawning in front of my face/behind me. I also felt like I was fighting ghosts, as in, shooting at Sonics shown at point A when in actuality they're at point B and the control lag is just showing me where the opponent was 1-2 seconds ago (but this might be just poor aiming on my part and I'm not sure if that's how SRB2CS even functions). However, when I do hit somebody and they are shown getting hit seconds later, it quite affects my judgement and decisions as to where I'm going to shoot, maneuver next, blah blah, in that small amount of time, considering this is a fast-paced game for me, and my playing style tends to be hit and run. Consequently, I ended up thoking back to my opponents in the direction opposite of where I wanted to go very often, thinking I'd need to go back when I'd already hit my opponent. I suppose this, along with the "fighting ghosts" thing is where the "chaos and randomness" comes in for me, as well as a possible reason to why I see a lot of less experienced players beating the more experienced, but then again, I may be the only one seeing this as chaotic at points.

I did move on to another server in which ping was lower, in its 100's I believe, and though it still felt somewhat awkward with occasional expected delay in hits (and also because I'm probably just not used to it yet), it was certainly less chaotic. It is great that this can finally allow players across the world to connect and play without c-lag. But I just hope that the huge difference between the chaos I'm getting from a server of 400 ping vs 100 ping won't ever be enough to make CS as equally aggravating as c-lag. That being said, this is certainly an alternative, yet interestingly the match I'm seeing in a CS vs regular server seems to play very differently in style. One example being that I've never this often seen two relatively skilled Sonic opponents both running backwards aiming and shooting to their sides at each other very few inches apart, only to result in not one of them injured in the end (yet, this may be just my experience =P)

This is still, however, unquestionably very impressive and gives SRB2's online play some more options now. Great work LXShadow! =)

Edit: Also, csconnect never seems to work for me, or any of my friends. But I think you may already know that?...not sure. =\
 
Thanks for the feedback. Considering the ping was 400 though, you may as well have been better off in SRB2CS than the standard netcode. =P

The things you've mentioned are all issues I knew would exist before the mod came out. It is indeed harder to engage with another player under such a high ping; in a way, you're fighting a robot. However, SRB2CS doesn't show opponents entirely as they were in the past (as real control lag would) - many tweaks are performed by the system to give a more accurate picture. As you can probably tell, these tweaks don't always work.

I would argue, though, that SRB2's standard netcode is not entirely accurate either. Fighting in control lag is hard, even after you've had it in half the servers you've played since 2006. As a client, you're forced to predict everything yourself, including successful ring hits (like SRB2CS) and precision platforming. You are a past image of yourself. And when gamemiss (packet loss) is high, things become all the more challenging.

...and even when you're the host of the netgame, you're still seeing past images of the other players as well, so properly engaging with them is also hard. SRB2CS does two things: it attempts to deal with all these issues itself, and also attempts to make the game fair between opponents. The latter is something I value - a lot. 1-vs-1 might actually have a proper meaning now.

Anyway, SRB2CS does have room for improvement in terms of synchronisation, and I'll try and work on that soon. In the meantime though, I've been working on something else SRB2-related; until I'm bored of that, SRB2CS won't be seeing many updates for the moment.

(BTW - yes, csconnect unfortunately broke during the switch to SRB2's standard netcode. =/ I'll try to work on that one soon. There is probably a simple solution that I'm simply not aware of yet.)
 
Actually, I'd say that vanilla SRB2's netcode is accurate to a fault. It always properly displays exactly what's going on, but in high latency situations it displays what's going on with such a delay that it's impossible to have precise control. Vanilla SRB2 sacrifices precise control for perfect accuracy. SRB2CS does the opposite.
 
Say, doesn't Rail bypass the lag on the shots, since it's a lazer that goes through the whole map in less than a second?
 
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Great mod! Really helps me and my friend, that lives on another continent, play online. But I never see servers pop up when I search for them...
 
Whenever I try to join a server on the MS in client siding, it says that I need to download a new update pack on the forums. I've downloaded what's there but I can't find the updates.
 
So, all this happened while I was on holiday from this game? And now the topic's dead?
Great... Bump!
Bah, I guess this is what happens when you spend too much time sleeping.

This netcode needs to be an option in 2.1, and the default for Race.
(well, pretty sure that was already said)
 
Items would be unusable in high latency situations because your opponents aren't where the game displays them. This has nothing to do with "needing more work", it's just due to the way it's designed.
 
Those are different games with a different structure and different netcode. You can't compare them to SRB2.
 
I thought the whole point of SRB2CS is to give SRB2 new netcode that doesn't suck. I can't see how your argument is valid
 
Maybe it would help if you had any knowledge at all what SRB2CS does. Its netcode isn't "better" or "worse", it's just different. Vanilla SRB2's netcode sacrifices fluid controls for absolute accuracy, SRB2CS sacrifices accuracy for fluid controls. There is no control lag, but that comes at the cost that your opponents aren't necessarily where your screen shows them to be. This is obviously a fatal flaw in a game with any kind of player interaction, and that includes SRB2 Kart. I have no idea what the netcode of MKWii and MK7 is like, but you have to understand that they run on an entirely different engine that implements things differently. Things like player movement, collision and items are handled differently than in SRB2. This makes a huge difference for the netcode, because what the netcode does is determine how all this information is sent back and forth between the players.

MKWii and MK7 were designed with netplay in mind. All the information that needs to be sent back and forth is optimized so you can send it quickly and with maximum accuracy. While Doom had netplay, it's radically different from SRB2's netplay because SRB2 works at much higher player speeds. This means that a. the information needs to be transferred much more quickly because the players change their position quickly and b. accuracy is much more vital. Because the players are so fast, tiny inaccuracies can make a huge practical difference as to where the player is located. And not only was Doom's netcode not tailor-made for SRB2, you must also understand that it was made in 1993. Game design has come a long way since then, especially in professional circles. You must understand that LXShadow is an amateur. His netcode is by no means perfect. And for all he changed, he's still working within the limits of Doom's 19-year-old code.

Now add to this that SRB2 Kart is essentially a hack. It uses an FPS engine to make a racing game. I hope you can imagine what a difference this makes. None of Doom's code was made with a racing game in mind and many things would be different if that was the case. This further complicates the netcode situation. The official Mario games have none of these problems. They use an engine and netcode made specifically for a racing game. SRB2, SRB2CS and SRB2 Kart all "misuse" Doom's code to do something that Doom wasn't made for. The resulting games are in no way efficient in their design and this makes it difficult to make a good netcode. Pasting SRB2CS' netcode onto SRB2 Kart would add another layer of inefficiency.

Essentially, you're making the wrong assumption that SRB2CS improves upon SRB2's netcode, when in reality it's just another equally inefficient way of doing things.
 
The inaccuracies are worth it. I don't care if I get hit by a red ring that I thought I passed a second ago. Almost all of the weapons are spamming and mostly used for area denial anyway, with the exception of the bomb ring (which has a splash radius to compensate) and a rail ring (which is already hitscan compensated). I would still be more likely to play ringslinger games under the new system than I am with the current.

The fact of the matter is that SRB2 is a platformer first and shooter second. You can say what you want about its effects on Match on CTF, but the benefits to coop and race are staggeringly clear, plainly because your character moves when you tell it to move. I cannot stress how important this is to SRB2's mechanics. This is a game that involves tight platforming that is made more complicated by the character's ever-changing movespeed. If your controls are not on the dot, maps like Nimbus Ruins and Mystic Realm are going to drive you fucking insane, as if they haven't already. In race, this is the only thing that matters.

And don't get me started on individual laggy clients slowing down the entire server to a crawl. Have the devs fixed that yet? They really should even if they never do anything else to this game again.
 
Honestly, if this was stable and supported all gametypes there would be a serious decision involved here, but it doesn't. I'd love to have improved netcode just as much as everyone else, but I'm not capable of doing it myself and therefore am just as stuck with the crappy current netcode as you are.
 
Well hell, I'll be the first to admit it isn't stable, but at least it's a start. People were clearly involved with improving the netcode in 2.0, so what exactly is stopping them from working toward this?

I mean, do you guys use github or anything? I think you ought to coerce MattW or JTE or whoever the fuck did the netcode to help LXShadow finish this thing. Doesn't have to be today, I just want to know that some day everyone can just play in this kind of netplay environment.
 
Well, the basic answer is that nobody is working on fixing the netcode because nobody WANTS to. It's a royal pain to do and other improvements, like new bosses and other more glamorous things are simply more fun to implement and are infinitely easier to do. This is a volunteer project we work on for fun, after all, so there's no way to force people into doing things they don't want to do.

Essentially no improvements to the netplay have been made for 2.1. In fact, right now the current beta has massive problems with netplay to the point where netgames are basically inoperable. Obviously we won't release like that, but the focus of 2.1 is most definitely single player content.
 
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