Giving the Illusion of Reduced Lag

[jake13jake]

The best way to give an illusion of reduced lag is to have a serverside instance of something and a clientside instance of something. When dealing with player->NPC lag, it's quite easy. All you need to do is make a local version of something and a global version of something.

Ex: A bush NPC.
You slash it, put leaps down for the client (local), trigger the server to put leaps there globally, handling it by using putnpc2 with a clientside script that isn't visible to the local version of the script.

Since data is coming from the server, watching other players interacting with serverside scripts there should be no lag. However, the client sending and receiving information from the server lags.

How do we handle player interactions then?
Let's say you're on a server with serverside hit-detection, yet all the gani manipulation and movement for players are done clientside. There are going to be problems with giving illusions of reduced lag.

The position of the player serverside, is often different from the position of the player clientside. You can be hit regardless where you are if the server thinks your in a certain location.

The only tactic you can really use against this is to base the damage placement on the serverside location of the player sending it. The rest depends on the receiving player's own serverside position.

For spectators a battle won't seem laggy at all. When two players are fighting, it takes time for a server to receive a trigger, and it takes time to send that to the other client. I believe that this is negligable, and would be the same as clientside hit detection. The only real problem I'm having is that a player's position on the server is different from their position on the client.

What illusion could handle if they're hit on the client and not the server?
Make it look like the player didn't hit them on the client? How would I go about doing this though.

What illusion could handle if they're hit on the server and not the client?
Same situation, except the inverse. Make it so the player did hit them on the client... but once again, how to go about doing this?

[Polo]

You've just made me think of somthing very interesting as to why our hit detections come across differently. !

[Warcaptain]

Only thing is, if there were lots of lag you would throw a bush and it would explode, then it would explode again a few seconds later x-x

Same with a bomb.

Also, which would deal damage? Clientside or serverside?

[Polo]

In serverside hit detection, the delay is split 50/50 between attacker and deffender, so only if they are both low lag does the attacking look right. If only one is low lag, then it looks 'good' for that person, as they are pretty much seeing what the server does.

In clientside HD, the lag is ALL on the attackers end. They have to pre-empt the position of the defender by the ammount of both players lag combined. This means that the defender always gets hit when they think they are, but the attacker will feel laggy if either player is.

The problem is that in a fight, both players are attackers and both are defenders, so in clientside hit detection, if either player lags, the attacking is lagged for both of them. In serverside HD, only the laggy person feels lagged.


There are more complications than this (security, abuse, packet racing) which need to be considered when deciding on hit detection systems, but that gives the general difference between the two.

[Skyld]

Originally Posted by jake13jake

Ex: A bush NPC.
You slash it, put leaps down for the client (local), trigger the server to put leaps there globally, handling it by using putnpc2 with a clientside script that isn't visible to the local version of the script.

Your system may be a cosmetic fix, but it seems overkill to do it once for you and then again for everyone else.

Lag is unavoidable. It'll look weird if one person is working on things they are seeing from the clientside before everyone else can even see it.

[jake13jake]

Originally Posted by Skyld

Your system may be a cosmetic fix, but it seems overkill to do it once for you and then again for everyone else.

Lag is unavoidable. It'll look weird if one person is working on things they are seeing from the clientside before everyone else can even see it.

Yes, I just now implemented a change for the damage system on Classic to give an illusion of less lag. There's a possible bug with it that I'll need to talk to stefan about. It warps the player back to the position the player was detected serverside at the time of being damaged. This caused the default camera to jump slightly in most cases, but I worked around that by adding temporary focus disorientation after getting hit. For a player in a lag spike, it could be like some kind of nightmare. For a player with regular lag, they will probably notice every once in a while, but for the most part it won't be too noticable.

The only difference in a serverside damage system and a clientside damage system should be on how the player receives the damage. The lag when sending exists with a clientside system also, and you can't really do anything about it (exists in any online game). The goal with this tweak is to give the illusion that the receiving end lag doesn't exist quite as much. That way it seems more like a clientside damage system, even if it means having to force the player into a disorientation mode if they're using the default camera.