As a Skulk on the ceiling i can't see Marines looking staight up at me.

zeep

As a Skulk on the ceiling, looking down, i can't make out Marines looking staight up at me. Is the model bugged? Because it looks like the marine is looking horizontally somewhat. I figure he's not seeing me, and then he opens fire at me.

Zek

Dogs can't look up - Skulks can't look down. Working as intended.

zeep

I'm sorry what do you mean?

What i meant was that the Marine model does not look up when in fact the player is looking up.

IronHorse

He should be.. Are you sure? There's an intentional delay in the animation for players, called smoothing. So sometimes you get shot by a marine who looks like he wasn't even looking at you, if his aim snaps.

Nordic

You are right that the marine model wont go 90 degrees facing upward. I have seen it. I have never really thought about it though.

IronHorse

Oohh.. Yeah not a perfect 90.
I thought he meant only horizontal animations..

The_Irrelevant_One

Zek said:

Dogs can't look up - Skulks can't look down. Working as intended.

Awesome

ritualsacrifice

Yeah, this used to happen to me all the time. You learn quickly to just assume that if you can see the marine, he can see you. Skulks aren't as sneaky as they're made out to be xD

Kouji_San

ritualsacrifice said:

Yeah, this used to happen to me all the time. You learn quickly to just assume that if you can see the marine, he can see you. Skulks aren't as sneaky as they're made out to be xD

Murphy's law!

SquishpokePOOPFACE

They kind of bend up at like 80 degrees, so if you see the whites of their eyes you should probably start attacking (or run away). Biggest tell is if they are crouchwalking, if they do that you know for sure they are expecting an ambush. 

Xao

IronHorse said:

There's an intentional delay in the animation for players, called smoothing.

What the fuck...you realise half of these "The rego is so bad in this game" posts are about being shot by someone who isn't even facing in your direction and you're saying it's a feature? For what purpose?

IronHorse

@xao because it looks spastic, mostly, i think was the reasoning? Most games utilize animation smoothing of sorts for this reason, afaik

You can test the numbers yourself and watch using cheats 1 and thirdperson in the console. 

In ns2/ns2/lua/player.lua   :

// The 3rd person model angle is lagged behind the first person view angle a bit.

// This is how fast it turns to catch up. Radians per second.

local kTurnDelaySpeed = 8

local kTurnRunDelaySpeed = 2.5

Xao

I'm aware of animation smoothing and its purpose and I feel pretty comfortable in saying no other game is as horrible about it nor as unforgiving as NS2 is, people stake their 30/50/75 tres life forms (Which takes 4-10-18 minutes on an average day respectively) on what they see on their screen and we now know for certain it's sometimes wrong and is purposefully being delayed because it would look bad otherwise, is this some fault of the netcode not sending enough information through server/client tick rate and a band aid of animation smoothing is applied? I'm assuming it has to be.

BentRing

Xao said:

... people stake their 30/50/75 tres life forms (Which takes 4-10-18 minutes on an average day respectively) on what they see on their screen and we now know for certain it's sometimes wrong...

And after they know what they see on their screen can  sometimes be wrong they should adjust their playing style accordingly.    

A prime example in another game would be the backstab mechanics for the TF2 spy.    After you know that a spy can run at you, do a (less than) half turn  and side stab you for a backstab; or run up some stairs with you chasing and he turns and jumps over you and stabs while above you for a backstab do you keep putting yourself in those situations where you get shanked when you sometimes shouldn't?     

ritualsacrifice

BentRing said:

Xao said:

... people stake their 30/50/75 tres life forms (Which takes 4-10-18 minutes on an average day respectively) on what they see on their screen and we now know for certain it's sometimes wrong...

And after they know what they see on their screen can  sometimes be wrong they should adjust their playing style accordingly.    

A prime example in another game would be the backstab mechanics for the TF2 spy.    After you know that a spy can run at you, do a (less than) half turn  and side stab you for a backstab; or run up some stairs with you chasing and he turns and jumps over you and stabs while above you for a backstab do you keep putting yourself in those situations where you get shanked when you sometimes shouldn't?     

The TF2 example isn't really what we're talking about ITT, honestly. That's just understanding how the backstab works. The animation smoothing in NS2 makes it so that a marine can be facing one direction while shooting another, which is kind of silly. I imagine they have to do it because the speed you move while tracking fades/lerks is just far too high to look natural, but I think a lot of people would take unnatural looking movement over the animation smoothing. Would look a little less pretty, but at least for me I'd rather be able to know that what my eyes are seeing is accurate.

tummy_yummy

The other option would be to go full ArmA and introduce inertia to the player's cursor to reflect the realistic animation.
Would be sort of fun to try....

Jekt

Looking one way but shooting another. We might have a problem here guys. 

elodea

IronHorse said:

@xao because it looks spastic, mostly, i think was the reasoning? Most games utilize animation smoothing of sorts for this reason, afaik

You can test the numbers yourself and watch using cheats 1 and thirdperson in the console. 

In ns2/ns2/lua/player.lua   :

// The 3rd person model angle is lagged behind the first person view angle a bit.

// This is how fast it turns to catch up. Radians per second.

local kTurnDelaySpeed = 8

local kTurnRunDelaySpeed = 2.5

While animation smoothing is understandable to a reasonably small degree, animation delay is unacceptable.  Combine this with the 'immersive' head turning, and you've also completely nullified the ability to reliably and intuitively position your own model.

This happens to be a melee/ranged game with very fast moving players, and most ranged/ranged games don't even have anywhere near this level of smoothing/delay.  Players who arn't naturally gifted twitch shooters and work off animation tells/counter-movement just don't find gameplay movement making much predictable sense with this high smoothing.  The priority should be improving the underlying animation framework, instead of these quicker/easier solutions.  You see this treat the symptom mentality all over the place in ns2 - over abundance of cd's, supply caps, hard limitations, vision obstruction, on/off switch mechanics.  I understand animation work is expensive, but its kinda like rally driving with bicycle tyres.

Better animations/framework with low smoothing is possible.  I'm no animation expert, but i feel part of the problem is that the animations have currently passed the complexity line between frustration and immersiveness.  Consider in beta days when there was still hardly much smoothing if at all, and skulks wern't doing mid air epileptic chicken dances as much as now.  There was the wall transitioning problem, but i surely that didn't require a blanket smoothing rate.  Something as simple as marine view turning or skulk view turning should not result in animation spazzing in the absence of smoothing.  Blanket smoothing isn't exactly healthy, breaks immersion with butt bites and butt flying, and clashes quite heavily with any kind of skulk movement system beyond floor walking.

NS1 didn't have this heavy animation smoothing/delay, yet retained immersive and accurate animation movement that didn't spazz out at all.  It's understandable in that context that many people still find ns2 severely lacking in this department.

|strofix|

No online game that I have ever played has ever had real time animations allowing you to actively know exactly where a player is looking at any one time. You always have to predict where they will look.

Can you know if a marine is looking straight up at a given time? Yes.

hakenspit

Kouji_San said:

ritualsacrifice said:

Yeah, this used to happen to me all the time. You learn quickly to just assume that if you can see the marine, he can see you. Skulks aren't as sneaky as they're made out to be xD

Murphy's law!

So "your skulk was made by the lowest bidder" or "friendly fire isn't"? I am sure some david Garrard fans will be able to list some more...perhaps with an alien slant.

 

The model animations are really tough and coupled with the nerf of camo you are never sure if the marine is looking at you or not....well aside from if your getting shot at/killed.

Whilst you can assume your always being watched it makes playing a skulk very unituitive and causes lots of new players to rage when they get shot by someone who they believe is not looking at them (or even in their direction)

elodea

Strofix misses the point once again.  There are two parts to overall animation delay as ironhorse pointed out
a) The lag compensation part.
b) Inbuilt animation delays and smoothing that occur irregardless of ping or interp.  You can see this by cheats 1, third person, and just turning your view from a still position.

|strofix|

elodea said:

Strofix misses the point once again.  There are two parts to overall animation delay as ironhorse pointed out
a) The lag compensation part.
b) Inbuilt animation delays and smoothing that occur irregardless of ping or interp.  You can see this by cheats 1, third person, and just turning your view from a still position.

You will need to explain what implication these points have with regards to my post. I seem to have missed the point here as well.

ScardyBob

Jekt said:

Looking one way but shooting another. We might have a problem here guys. 

You obviously haven't heard of the TSF secret buttrifle. It gives any kharaa who tries to sneak up on your quite a surprise.

joederp

IronHorse said:

@xao because it looks spastic, mostly, i think was the reasoning? Most games utilize animation smoothing of sorts for this reason, afaik

If the devs are concerned about models appearing spastic, they need to completely start over on the skulk / lerk animations .. or at least the speed at which they can change direction.. A lerk can change any direction, even do a complete 180 at any time at full speed without losing any speed at all! Have you ever watched a medium-high skilled player controlling those life forms with celerity? The lerk abruptly changing directions at full speed, the skulk running on uneven surfaced walls / floors/ railings at high speed - Good god it looks insanely spastic, and requires absolutely incredible aiming / tracking ability from the marines.
As a skulk on the ceiling, I could care less if the marines model snaps up abruptly, as long as I am instantly notified of the marine inspecting the ceiling! Because every tenth of a second in delay means I am more likely to get picked off without having a chance to even touch my space bar to attack. Its already pushing the limits of what is functionally reasonable when you count in player pings, last thing we need is to add in a delay so the animation looks smoother.

joederp

|strofix| said:

No online game that I have ever played has ever had real time animations allowing you to actively know exactly where a player is looking at any one time. You always have to predict where they will look.

Can you know if a marine is looking straight up at a given time? Yes.

Are you suggesting that the delays in NS2 are the same as other reaction time based FPS such as Counter-strike? I challenge you to show the reaction times are similar from when a player moves and another player sees it. I can 100% promise you the delay in ns2 is much much longer and makes it impossible to react to seeing a marine noticing you. By the time you see his model aiming up at you, you are already being shot on his screen. By the time you notice him fire his first bullet, you are already dead on his screen. This is absolutely not the case in something like CS. Go try it out if you have not already.

IronHorse

Just to be clear i only know what's occurring, and not the developers' reasons why.. I was just taking a stab at the why after i did testing with those numbers back in early beta (before marine torso rotation animations)

Definitely agree the number could be lowered, but i don't think you'd want it off necessarily.