Now that we have the 64 Bit update, it's time for the tickrate / updaterate to go up.

Samdaman

Guys as many of you know, or don't, the Tickrate / updaterate is only at 30. This is a HUGE DEAL!! You cannot balance a game correctly with that degree of lag / lack of updates.

If you are uneducated on netcode / the way networking in video games work, here is a link to a youtuber who does great breakdowns for videogames: https://youtube.com/user/xFPxAUTh0r1ty

We are the fastest paced game in the FPS genre at the moment with the slowest / worst tickrates. How many of you experience getting shot around corners? How many experience getting shot even though you saw the marine looking in a different direction??! How many, Lerks, Fades, or anything fast paced have you lost due to how bad the updaterate is? Guys, it is a big deal and a game this fast paced and this unique SHOULD NOT HAVE ONLY 30 TICKS A SECOND!

Now, you may be asking, well why don't server owners turn it up? The answer is it is hard coded that if you want to turn up your updaterate you also have to turn up your ai ticks per second as well, causing massive server strain. This is something only the devs can fix and it isn't worth fixing unless people really want it and support it. It also is optional and all servers boot up with 30 when it should be 60 or even greater.

Here is an example of what happens when the tickrate is low in a video game: https://youtube.com/watch?v=XmGZwXwJzqo Now, this is just in a slow game like overwatch. Maybe now you are starting to understand why this is so bad for a game where we travel so fast we could go back in time.

Here is another example from Battlefield 4 before they fixed it and upped it to 60: https://youtube.com/watch?v=761X0hMYQ6I

and Another: https://youtube.com/watch?v=oRHhw5Y4Qok

Look, I could post examples all days guys, Please, lets make this something worth developing. A game this amazing should have the netcode to back it. I guarantee you that we have lost MASSIVE amounts of players due to how bad the netcode is in this game, it just produces a ton of FUCK THIS SHIT emotions and makes people rage quit. We will also never be a competitive game unless we upgrade. I promise you all, I have run a server before with the updaterate set to 60 and it was a day and night difference. Hell, if I was trying to run this game I would be gunning for 120 updates a second instead of 60 because that's how fast paced this game is.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and if any devs are reading this, thank you for everything you have done THIS FAR, you have done a lot, I've been watching. The devs are doing an awesome job so far, I hope they can continue this streak and really bring this game into the light.

GhoulofGSG9

The tick rate is not hard coded in any way and it's quite easy to change the network settings. And because I'm lazy please check my post at https://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/comment/2364638 to understand why increasing the tick rate is not as simple as it sounds:

GhoulofGSG9 wrote: »

Time for a little tech talk!

First of all NS2 utilizes multiple threads to run various tasks at once. With the upcoming 64bit build (which is available at the 64bit steam beta branch but not stable yet) NS2 gets better in distributing those tasks across all CPUs. Also NS2 is able to run more at once because no task has to wait to be able to allocate enough memory to run. Left aside that every task runs a little bit faster thanks to being able to fully utilize the modern CPU now with 64bit instructions.

The image below shows the CPU usage of the 64bit client:

Now some may wonder why not all cores are used by 100%. That's because tasks depend on each other. The render tasks only start after the world has been updated and that depends on various other tasks to finish in time (physics simulation and i/o tasks).

For those of you interested to see details about those things in action type profile into your console and hit space:

That will allow you to see how much time each of the main render pipeline task needed to render given frame. You can also expand each thread's call trace by clicking on the + symbols to see what exactly takes all the time. Use a and d to navigate between frames and space to continue profiling.

Enter profile again into the console to close it.

To make it short as soon as one task takes significant more time to process it slows down every other task depending on it. And that's the issue with NS2. The world update routine is written in Lua using no co-routines and is not very optimized at all. Which means all world entities are updated in order and updating each takes significant CPU time.

So increasing the world updates per second is not feasible without a lot single core power to make sure the world update finishes in time even after the 64bit update.

Though we have been working on optimizing the game logic code in the last year and hope to get those changes out after the 64bit migration has been done.

However there is another reason most who have tried increased rates discarded the idea after testing. There is a lot of game logic code that was not written with the possibility of higher tick rates in mind. So e.g. you have logic routines causing players to take twice as much damage over time when the tickrate gets doubled. To really support higher update rates those lines of codes need to be fixed as well.

Which all in all is a lot of work. We will continue working on it slowly but steady and will let you know if we think higher update rates are finally not only possible but also feasible.

Edit: Added a screenshot and some details about the ingame profiler

Samdaman

AWWW HELL YAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Samdaman

Brb gonna cream my panties. https://youtube.com/watch?v=bANez1olaSE

moultano

@GhoulofGSG9 do you have a list of tickrate dependent code? That seems like the sort of thing the community might be good at digging into since each fix would be pretty self contained.

coolitic

Samdaman wrote: »

We are the fastest paced game in the FPS genre at the moment

I assume then you've never heard of arena shooters?

Hobbeson

I've heard that higher tick rates tend to mess with balance (favoring marines). Does anyone have experience with this?

Samdaman

Hobbeson wrote: »

I've heard that higher tick rates tend to mess with balance (favoring marines). Does anyone have experience with this?

It does, you would be amazed at the sheer amount of bullets that disappear into the void. At least, during my testing of using a high tickrate the marines became very powerful. Also the dual miniguns broke, their overheat mechanic was sped up.

I had to compensate by buffing the defensive abilities of the aliens, mainly the gorges and also buffing the skulks. I installed a mod that twilightblue made called "New Skulk Jump" and that made the bunnyhoping faster and with more maneuverability in the air (Think counterstrike how you can turn in mid air). Twilight has changed the mod since then though and it is more like the default mode but faster. If you want to try the version I used I made a copy at that time and it is called "Skulk Movement Changes" on the workshop. I also buffed the aliens even further by installing a mod called "Immersive Lighting" I also made a copy of that if you want to see what that was like.. Although I believe that mod developer changed the mod name and it is now called "Creepier Atmosphere". If you want to see a list of all the balance changes I made then click here: https://testsquadron.com/threads/test-squadron-natural-selection-2-server.6214/ It's actually pretty awesome to see how many are in the actual game now.

Like the dev said though, the game wasn't coded for higher tickrates so it really messes with things, especially the overheat mechanic for miniguns.

The next time you are getting shot though, watch your health bar and see if it correlates to the amount of bullets being shot / see if every bullet is actually hitting you or if it is just bursts of damage. Also, play as a lerk and have a friend shoot you just as you are rounding the corner and see how far past the corner you continue to take damage. I've done a lot of testing with friends and the tickrates. Probably spent a month just testing the netcode and fixing the issues that popped up and seeing just how much the tickrates mattered in this game.

Hobbeson

Samdaman wrote: »

Hobbeson wrote: »

I've heard that higher tick rates tend to mess with balance (favoring marines). Does anyone have experience with this?

It does, you would be amazed at the sheer amount of bullets that disappear into the void. At least, during my testing of using a high tickrate the marines became very powerful. Also the dual miniguns broke, their overheat mechanic was sped up.

I had to compensate by buffing the defensive abilities of the aliens, mainly the gorges and also buffing the skulks. I installed a mod that twilightblue made called "New Skulk Jump" and that made the bunnyhoping faster and with more maneuverability in the air (Think counterstrike how you can turn in mid air). Twilight has changed the mod since then though and it is more like the default mode but faster. If you want to try the version I used I made a copy at that time and it is called "Skulk Movement Changes" on the workshop. I also buffed the aliens even further by installing a mod called "Immersive Lighting" I also made a copy of that if you want to see what that was like.. Although I believe that mod developer changed the mod name and it is now called "Creepier Atmosphere". If you want to see a list of all the balance changes I made then click here: https://testsquadron.com/threads/test-squadron-natural-selection-2-server.6214/ It's actually pretty awesome to see how many are in the actual game now.

Like the dev said though, the game wasn't coded for higher tickrates so it really messes with things, especially the overheat mechanic for miniguns.

The next time you are getting shot though, watch your health bar and see if it correlates to the amount of bullets being shot / see if every bullet is actually hitting you or if it is just bursts of damage. Also, play as a lerk and have a friend shoot you just as you are rounding the corner and see how far past the corner you continue to take damage. I've done a lot of testing with friends and the tickrates. Probably spent a month just testing the netcode and fixing the issues that popped up and seeing just how much the tickrates mattered in this game.

I really like the idea of trying to balance higher rates with improved alien movement (speed/control). And I'd love it if, as part of the ns2 rebrand, we could get a new vanilla that was suited for higher rate servers with suitable balance changes to compensate.

moultano

How far does a celerity lerk move in one server tick? (Relative to its model length)