Delay and how to fix it.

[UT99.org]

for listing it public, unpassworded, where there is slight chance someone would stumble upon it that is nearby and not using auto-adjustment of their delay? IE: pug channel/mIRC auto-launch with command-line option to simulate correct ping

Or do you mean a delay higher than 0? There is a lot of people accustomed to zero ping I won't argue with that it's apples and oranges. Maybe I'm drawing on the success of the game in multiplayer compared to most if not all other games that are built with compensation of some sort, and using that as a basis for the skill factor where the game is won and not having the the best connection. IE: more experienced player is more likely to win

Anyway that is my position, have yet to test the TimeDilation adjustment of playerpawns, haven't had time to look at the NewNet source. It's not high on to-do list. There is a built-in function of the game to increase your delay and players may have to familiarise themselves with command-line options

[Feralidragon]

Are people really ridiculing this? [...]

Because it is ridiculous...

Ping is simply the time that data takes to travel from point A to point B, no matter how good a software to try to lessen its effects, this is a physical limitation which is unavoidable atm. Lower ping actually means a better and more solid gameplay, and sure, a lower pinger will have an edge against a higher pinger, but only if that lower pinger has extremely good accuracy and reflexes, otherwise it just takes a moment of hesitation or a bad decision (ducking, cover, etc) from that lower pinger or a miss, for the higher pinger to as easily wipe the floor with him.

I play FPS games a lot (it's pretty much the only kind of game I play consistently, and varied different ones). I certainly feel the effect of both a lower and higher pings, as well as the other players pings which can be very low (even less than 10ms) and very high (even more than 300ms), and certainly there are several times that I am only "shot" by them over that difference, however due the the lag compensation systems, the opposite also happens such as a low pinger thinking he dodged or protected against a shot and then all of a sudden receive that shot out of "nowhere" ("through the wall" for example, when you cover successfully, but the other guy's ping is high enough for him to still have seen you in the process of doing so and being able to shoot you).
High pingers even have the advantage of getting "laggy movements" when their ping is high enough from the low pinger point of view, causing the low pinger to miss almost every shot (some players will even go as far as lag their own movement (higher their ping a lot and suddenly) at the expense of a single key press, to not get hit).

I guess you have no idea how many times these players (the ones with low ping) want to kick out the ones with higher ping because of that, it's kind of ironic actually.
In all the FPS games I have seen, whenever "admins" have the chance, they do the exact opposite: limit the max ping a player can have in that game, which is actually a lot more logical, and in case of competitive games is almost a requirement.

Now making a player having a worse gaming experience just because some of the regular players cannot have a better connection due to their location or because of their own ISP, and even go as far as call it "cheating", is imho a complete joke. The admin should instead look for a more optimal solution where the ping is low enough and acceptable for most players.
It's the equivalent of having players to cap their frame rate to 30fps, play at 800x600, 16-bit color, in a CRT with a computer of the size of small refrigerator, and with a "piano" instead of a what's considered a keyboard nowadays and a ball mouse instead of an optical mouse, a graphic card running DX7 alone with 4Mb of RAM, in Windows 98 or so, since that's how "it was originally meant to be played" after all and only because some of the players are in the same situation.
By that same reasoning, anyone with better hardware is "cheating" as well...

Any admin can create whichever rules he/she wants for his/her server, and only whoever agrees with them plays there, whoever doesn't is free to play elsewhere (no one is compelled to play anywhere), but don't get surprised if people mock the very concept of it if it clearly makes no sense at all.
I had seen this topic months ago, and although I didn't say anything back then, I checked such "rules" and I couldn't help but giggle.

[UT99.org]

But it's UT you can't compare it to other games like that. And forcing everyone to have the same ping is the goal. It's only called cheating because the weapons are over-powered, which is self-explaining since their shots reach the server first. Guns like the minigun would be the most infuriating and best example of this. Even with ping compensation and zero ping if you shoot (or shock combo) at the _same time_, the high pinger will still lose. I can sort of understand the point you make about hardware, to that I'll mention there are other servers where illegal keybinds are monitored and banned. An extra button on your mouse might seem a legitimate reason to buy it until you get stung for toggling or something right? Another point is linux servers and windows servers behave noticeably different. Windows servers being the majority of populated servers, it's not by design but low pings are the only way to play on windows servers, maybe too many people are used to this and don't remember the old days

[TheDane]

Ping is simply the time that data takes to travel from point A to point B.

Not exactly. Ping is the measured time for when you send out a beacon until you recieve the answer. The time the data takes to travel depends on the amount of data beeing transfered held against the senders upload bandwidth/speed and the recievers download bandwidth/speed. A ping doesn't only go from A to B, it goes from A to B and then back to A. I know when you ping some site you get a list of measured times from each jump there is on your way to the destination, and when you reach the end of the list (your destination) you get the last time listed there as a total ping, but... you can only obtain that information be recieving an answer back that you have arrived

And on-topic: I will disconnect and never come back on a server that grants me artificial delay of any kind - period.

[noccer]

But ping is a tool ^^ (no i dont start to shine with my knowledge )

The idea that everyone has a slightly equal ping isn't bad at all, it could give everyone the same chance.
The problem is, the player that was forced to set a lag can be kicked/banned from other servers for - you may guess - tooo high ping. Also it is a bit weird to force people to get a bad game experience.

But (and dont take it as offense) calling people cheater because they have a good ping is stupid bullshit and excusing this with "we say cheat because the weapons are overpowered" is the most funny shit i ever read here no, i mean "mit die größte gequirlte Scheiße die ich hier je gelesen habe"

As you said it, lag correction etc. does not erase the problem with different delays, but i found out (maybe it is only me that feels like that) it is more only an advantage for the people with high ping, for low it is not better, i feel that it can also be a disadvantage. What about newnet as solution? It is also open source.

[Feralidragon]

@TheDane and noccer:
"Ping" is indeed a tool (and started as one afaik, but don't quote me on that), and yes, whenever a "ping" is made using such tool it's generally from A to B and from B to A, however strictly speaking about "ping" as a term, is something sent only from A to B whereas a "pong" is the actual answer (B to A).
In the context of a web server or any kind of a simple request (query -> response), the "response time" is both together (ping+pong), whereas in the context of an authoritative game server or any similar real time persistent connection (socket), only actual "latency" applies which is just the "ping", since in such environments you actually do not get a direct response from the server (other than potential internal data checks inherent in the TCP layers, but inexistent in UDP alone).

In the case of games, the only important thing is when you do something like pressing a key for an action, how much time it takes for that action to reach the server, while on the other hand, whenever something happens on the server, what matters is when it gets reflected on the client. The latency in real time communication is therefore measured the same way as a "ping-pong" but then divided by 2 to get just the first half in most cases (not the most accurate way to do so, but accurate enough for most purposes, like in games).
So a player with a ping of "100ms", whenever he fires a weapon, ignoring tick-rates and server-side processing, it will actually take 200ms for the player to see if anything happened as the input will take 100ms to get to the server, and then that causes something to happen and that data takes another 100ms to reach the player.


@billybill:
I can indeed compare UT with any game, even newer ones. There weren't that many breakthroughs in the case of latency in games over the years, in fact many of them opt to camouflage it by not letting the player know of some important data (like packet loss, which is a rare thing to check in a game nowadays, and which still does happen). UT has been gifted with mods using both old and new concepts in that field, some of which have become better than plenty of newer games in the market (including later iterations of UT itself and the engine as a whole, which didn't get that much better as far as I can tell judging by the existing UEngine3 FPS online games out there).

However, if anything, the fact that UT by default works best with a lower ping, and since nowadays we possess better communications, less latency and at a lower cost (depending on the country ofc), wouldn't it actually be better to provide the best experience possible to a UT player? Because none of the measures ever taken by software alone will "fix" the root physical problem of "latency", ever. Hopefully one day technology gets advanced enough to have nearly zero latency, but we didn't get there yet, so all there is atm is a set of (some good and others not so good) attempts to lessen the effect, either by "compensating" here and there or by actively playing "psychological" games with the player himself through such software.

Having that said, trying to get everyone with the same latency "to make it fair" doesn't work well either:
1 - it worsens the gameplay experience for the players (by far)
2 - you will still have latency differences between players anyway, you cannot simply guarantee a fixed latency for everyone by that command alone:
2.a) let's say you require a 80ms at least, would your server accept a 120ms player? Because that makes almost as much difference as a 40ms player against a 80ms one for example, and I do feel that in my skin whenever I play BLR for example
2.b) what if your regulars suddenly can only play at 150ms ping, is that going to be the new standard? or even 200ms? 500ms (that's even too terrifying for me to imagine, it's like playing a FPS like a pokemon game, by turns)

Furthermore, only because in the old days pings were higher, it doesn't mean you should try to recreate those days. You're free to do so, but that doesn't really help anything concerning "fairness".
For instance on the mouse stuff: in some games I played, there was a problem which can be called "cheating", which is the fact that some players bought mouses with the ability to program macros to some buttns, and that caused keypress-dependent semi-automatic weapons to be transformed in automatic beasts (by writing a simple macro to automatically activate the fire button X times a second when that macro button was pressed).
Having key binds to dodge more easily, can also be considered as "cheating" and should indeed get banned imho.
What all those have in common is that they are considered "cheating" since a player is not supposed to do any of them through automation, every single one of them should be done by the human playing the game, and thus are no different from a trigger bot or a aim bot or similar input triggering cheats.
Whereas latency is an inherent problem with real time communication, and in fact, specially old games such as UT, are *not* meant to be played with such high pings, but rather with pings as low as possible, being LAN play (the environment with the less possible latency) the most desirable. The fact that most of the time back then people played online with higher pings, was just a consequence of the limitation of the communications back then, and not an instrument of balancing of the game.

If a minigun is the best example you have to show about an "overpowered" weapon for low pingers, you can write a very very simple mutator to lessen its damage, hell you could even make its damage to be proportional to the player latency (although that's probably a terrible idea), hence having no need to impose such latency limits. Use your imagination.
For me, I am used to play with assault rifles and whatnot in another game, and the latency difference between a 100ms pinger and a 150ms pinger is the same as between a 20ms pinger and a 70ms one, so in the end, such measurement in trying to even pings by obligating a minimal threshold doesn't really add any fairness at all once even a higher pinger joins in.

[UT99.org]

OK This might surprise you somewhat...

99% of the people who use the servers do so on a 200+ms ping/delay. And they choose to play there, and by choice, on full servers with people just like them. The ones who get called a cheater usually have a 30ms, and I'm saying they do have some control over that. This goes back to 1999 when it was the same case, the game would've been played much more at 200ms than a LAN 30ms (not that lan games didn't happen). So having everyone use a delay other than 0ms is not a new concept it is an old one, that said, it would be very nice to enforce a 180-200ms dial-up delay on all players without kicking anybody. And shifting this debate to how that could be accomplished, if not NewNet, have people tried changing their TimeDilation like I mentioned (you can do this client-side). I shouldn't advertise how to speed hack, but simply put you are changing the game-speed on your client regardless of what is set on the server, so it goes both ways up and down. Any small number over or under 1 (0. something or 1. something) should still be playable, although projectiles may not simulate in fluid motion and weird stuff definitely happens if you stray too much from the original value. I will later edit this part of the post out to not encourage speed hacking

My argument about them shooting at the same time is not the best one, because it still applies with lag compensation and zero ping. I think that is what I was trying to say though, if everyone has exactly the same and some of the calls are 50/50 it can even things up. I have thought about lowering damage on weapons, but that probably won't happen unless I can get some real numbers. I believe minigun does actually use projectiles, it's usually complained because the server places them in a "grip" when they are being shot at, which pure fixes anyway

and they're not called cheaters when they are kicked, they are called cheaters when they complain or are persistent about wanting to play at 30ms vs 180ms+ players

[noccer]

The ones who get called a cheater usually have a 30ms, and I'm saying they do have some control over that.

Imagine one would show a fake ping that is lower than his real latency. What positive effect will he have? He would have the same latency and only a masqueraded value. The only control you can have is: Move close to an ISP with great routing or a big datacenter and ask if they provide internet for you and pray that the server is on a good host with a clever admin.

When i had one ut server in a datacenter around 150 km away, my ping was constant 15 (F6 between 25 and 40). Now it is around 35, datacenter 400 km away.
Where the hell should i need a cheat for that? Light would be even faster if not the fibre and the copper would block it.

I shouldn't advertise how to speed hack,

-cpuspeed=value (in megahertz)

You can legally use this if you want to prevent your cpu change its frequency. The value should be very close to the frequency your cpu runs on.

Abusing this will lead to a ban on many servers, at least it is worth a kick.

and they're not called cheaters when they are kicked, they are called cheaters when they complain

read my mind - click

[papercoffee]

OK This might surprise you somewhat...

99% of the people who use the servers do so on a 200+ms ping/delay. And they choose to play there, and by choice, on full servers with people just like them. The ones who get called a cheater usually have a 30ms, and I'm saying they do have some control over that. This goes back to 1999 when it was the same case, the game would've been played much more at 200ms than a LAN 30ms (not that lan games didn't happen). So having everyone use a delay other than 0ms is not a new concept it is an old one, that said, it would be very nice to enforce a 180-200ms dial-up delay on all players without kicking anybody. And shifting this debate to how that could be accomplished, if not NewNet, have people tried changing their TimeDilation like I mentioned (you can do this client-side). I shouldn't advertise how to speed hack, but simply put you are changing the game-speed on your client regardless of what is set on the server, so it goes both ways up and down. Any small number over or under 1 (0. something or 1. something) should still be playable, although projectiles may not simulate in fluid motion and weird stuff definitely happens if you stray too much from the original value. I will later edit this part of the post out to not encourage speed hacking

My argument about them shooting at the same time is not the best one, because it still applies with lag compensation and zero ping. I think that is what I was trying to say though, if everyone has exactly the same and some of the calls are 50/50 it can even things up. I have thought about lowering damage on weapons, but that probably won't happen unless I can get some real numbers. I believe minigun does actually use projectiles, it's usually complained because the server places them in a "grip" when they are being shot at, which pure fixes anyway

and they're not called cheaters when they are kicked, they are called cheaters when they complain or are persistent about wanting to play at 30ms vs 180ms+ players

I got the slight feeling it's your server we talk about here?
Or why do you defend this Ox-crap so passionate.

[UT99.org]

Huh? it IS my server. It's an auto kick, it's not like we know who this complaining person is because we have banned him. The admin section of our forums used to be full of screenshots of players who couldn't take a hint when they were manually kicked for it, and had to be banlisted. This mod is saving a lot of work, only downside is it auto-kicks the low delay players who would never win even with the 'help' their low delay brings

noccer: I think they are different things, -pktlag=X will simulate a delay by that number, increasing your ping in game, shows on scoreboard and everythingl. I use that cpu one to double make sure my CPU is on the correct value and not being over-ridden by speedstepping or something, I guess like you said you wouldn't kick for this. I suppose you could put a different value than your CPU but I am not sure what sort of behaviour your client would have. Same goes for the TimeDilation though, I don't think it is the same as the -pktlag commandline, that is what I am trying to establish. You get 6 decimal places, and I fail at math too much to speculate on how to have the server simulate the small values required. Of course, NN would still be an option if it allowed for increasing that 0ms to something else.

With Pure there is an option no lockdown to make minigun and pulse beams not make players get stuck in the grip and not be able to move properly. CSHP/Pure came out like 5 years after the game when playing on lower pings online was getting more common. As for LAN it's still not played a whole lot today, that's why there was never a fix for this, the default values make it even worse being that LAN is 35 tickrate and internet 20tr. Probably why WCG was filled with internet players who got smashed by GitZz who apparently played LAN quite a lot, over-all it could've been a more fun tourny to watch had they internet delays, there were even some upsets that may not have been upsets, leading to some weird match-ups closer to the finals

I can probably leave that post intact since very few people would know how to do what I said, and what I said is probably not a big revelation. I can post an example but I would def. remove that. I can post screenshots of players I would consider cheating, and remove any player names that appear, but I think it's pretty self explanatory when I say full server 180+ms and one player 30ms

[noccer]

Setting a much lower cpuspeed value then your cpu has is the easiest "speedhack" of all causing your ut to run faster. It is like a bike race, you sign up with a 52 teeth toothwheel on your pedals and before the race starts you mount your holy shit 88 teeth circular saw

The lockdown/pushback/whatever is a feature of UT, doesn't it look awesome when you nail Kira on the wall with your minigun

Maybe i got a nice addition for your server too, -pktloss ^^ Okay, enough fun about this now, if your players like this, why not. I like to play on unrealkillers US instagib with newnet. Somehow the americans are easier to kill than the germans or europeans. (ok, the european are just fkn my ass up

[Feralidragon]

200ms? Wow, when I talked about it, I mentioned as just an example. The last time I played with that value was in a server located in the west side of US (almost the other side of the globe in my case)... it was horrifying... (every time I made a headshot, I only knew about it almost half a second later).
Anyway, I am not sure what speedhacks and whatnot have anything to do with latency (maybe I am missing something?).
And I seriously do not understand why with NewNet you would want to "simulate" a higher ping, when the point of it is for players to have a better gameplay experience. If anything, something like NewNet should also be a motivator factor to give your 200ms players a good experience while keeping the 30ms players, wanting to simulate a higher latency even with it sounds like self masochism...

@noccer: As a side note (and a curiosity), if ping was dependent on light speed alone, by my calculations we would all enjoy a ping as low as about 70ms in a server in the opposite side of Earth taking the longest route to get there.
We're already heading that way though, but we're still probably a decade away from it.

[Darkelarious]

Actually, I'm with billybill on this one.
No matter what somebody thinks of the admin's rules, the admin's rules are the admin's right. We always say: "if you don't like the rules of server A, why don't you start your own server?". Hypocrites as we are, when this person indeed starts his/her own server, now we are saying: "your rules are stupid, you should change them".

This server is the admin's little corner of the Internet, the only place in the world where he gets to decide what he wants. The only drawback may be that nobody wants to play there because of ridiculous rules, but that's the individual player's choice. And not up to us to decide.

[UT99.org]

It's an opposite speedhack, it's a slow-hack. lol. Probably same as the -pktlag commandline, only it changes the gamespeed. But why is it called Time Dilation, that name would imply that it is exactly the same. I'd suggest starting with 0.999999 on a 1.0 (100%) gamespeed server and work your way backwards through the decimal places. Erm, should I post a code example, menu item or whatever to make it easier for people to try themselves? How about I just help anyone who can't figure out how to do it with very vague answers to their questions that point them in the right direction? The last thing I want is a menu item with my name on it that gets cheat listed

Is the west coast US really on the other side of the planet to Portugal? Most our servers are in USA, played on by russians, europeans, south americans, asia, south-east asia, oceania etc. It has to be west coast US and not east to get even close to 200ms from Europe, otherwise it would be under. All those other locations with exception of badly routed Russia (through Europe?? WTF? let's take the scenic route?) will get very close to 200ms

And yes 70ms the highest from point A to B anywhere on the planet will be nice, unfortunately the undersea cables and everything are a complete mess though, a long way to go, quite a bit more than a decade I'd say. Unless wireless/satellite becomes more common, which I wouldn't want to be a part of. Hey let's direct mobile beams directly into the human brain and then see the health effects in decade. lol. OK I've had my daily rant