Suspect: Greater Hitbox Lag Theory.
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Remain Calm Join Date: 2002-11-02 Member: 5216Forum Moderators, Constellation
Remain Calm Join Date: 2002-11-02 Member: 5216Forum Moderators, Constellation
<div class="IPBDescription">Celerity vs leap = advantage?</div> After complaining (on a server while playing) about how I never seem to be able to avoid getting the "shots spark off the skulk" problem with my shottie, and claiming that I always get shot up rather easily when I'm flying around(leap, see sig), someone mentioned that he also found that annoying, but shooting leaping skulks is really easy for some reason.
So I got the idea that maybe it's because of just being in the air or not that causes hitbox lag. And, went in today and used leap as little as possible(celerity and cara early instead). It was insane. On co_faceoff I would run around a corner into 3(<b><u>3!</u></b>) <b>shotgun</b> marines, and survive to kill them all. This even without focus.
And the marines were NOT crappy, at least one of them was a clan player, and the others weren't doing too shabby earlier in the game.
A bit later during the end-game I used leap a bunch. As it was, the marines were usually busy shooting fades, and didn't aim for me, so it was a bunch easier than assaulting the marine base usually is. But, point is, now when I went head-to-head with shotgunners I would actually get shot when you'd expect to get shot, and not just... randomly.
So, in short;
Running around without leaping, preferably with celerity, means you get the infamous "hitbox lag", where shots just bounce off you harmlessly most of the time.
Leaping, while making you a harder target, means you actually get hit normally.
So I got the idea that maybe it's because of just being in the air or not that causes hitbox lag. And, went in today and used leap as little as possible(celerity and cara early instead). It was insane. On co_faceoff I would run around a corner into 3(<b><u>3!</u></b>) <b>shotgun</b> marines, and survive to kill them all. This even without focus.
And the marines were NOT crappy, at least one of them was a clan player, and the others weren't doing too shabby earlier in the game.
A bit later during the end-game I used leap a bunch. As it was, the marines were usually busy shooting fades, and didn't aim for me, so it was a bunch easier than assaulting the marine base usually is. But, point is, now when I went head-to-head with shotgunners I would actually get shot when you'd expect to get shot, and not just... randomly.
So, in short;
Running around without leaping, preferably with celerity, means you get the infamous "hitbox lag", where shots just bounce off you harmlessly most of the time.
Leaping, while making you a harder target, means you actually get hit normally.
Comments
However, realize that what you say only applies to a shotgun. For HMG's and LMG's, if you just run on flat they will never miss you due to hitbox lag in most cases, unless you are bugged.
I can't promise that this is the case with your experiance, however.
Seen it; died because of it.
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Of course, that'd be different than say CS does it.
Of course this would raise the question of, that wouldnt be very fair if you were standing still and the hitbox wasnt on you.... <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif' /><!--endemo-->
No, that's actually an option that you can turn on. Client side hit prediction causes blood when there was no hit sometimes.
With your situation, there are two explanations (other than just 'luck'): a) you were hitbox-bugged, which is a seperate condition which renders you bulletproof as long as you keep moving and don't move directly towards fire, b) the location where you pulled off 3 kills was advantageous for you. I'd suspect there was a problem if you were playing against top-calibre clanners in open areas, but your evidence isn't strong enough.
Question of year <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is simple, because on client, model position is different than on server, sparks are produced on client (you hit your model, you were aiming right), but server holds different position (due to latency problem and him changing direction) and so you miss it (no blood).. simple..
Question of year <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is simple, because on client, model position is different than on server, sparks are produced on client (you hit your model, you were aiming right), but server holds different position (due to latency problem and him changing direction) and so you miss it (no blood).. simple.. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
That's what I meant when I said 'netcode'.
I thought the Half-Life netcode did away with this kind of **** ages ago, by making combat what-you-see-is-what-you-get. In other words, if your (local client) crosshair is on the enemy, and you press the trigger, you hit them, regardless of your lag state. This was deliberately implemented by Valve to prevent the kind of lag-induced "fire behind the target" **** which used to pertain where people with mismatched pings played on the same server.
Does Natural Selection do something different?
Imagine this:
- you jump with your skulk
- 100ms later server gets info that you jumped with skulk
- another 100ms later this information gets to player who is currently watching you
- he aims and press fire
- another 100ms later info about shot arrives to server
and so on .. there are many dalays and thouh very advanced ways to soften problem are in use, it simply cannot be solved 100% correctly for every player and every situation. Even though events are "backdated" there must be only one "reality" that is common for everyone and that's the reality how server percieves it, not you, and you are delayed from server.
I know how server/client lag works, but thanks for the explanation nontheless. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->
I don't really understand why this is happening, unless Natural Selection has deliberately dumped the client-side hit detection features of the Half-Life netcode which were introduced way, way back in the CS beta cycle to solve this very problem. I thought client-side detection was used in all Half-Life mods. I know it's used in Day of Defeat, for instance, because I can see the results (typically, falling over dead after it seems like I've run around a corner intto cover).
Client-side hit detection is somewhat controversial but there's a clear need for it, IMO. If you fire at someone when your reticle is centered on their head (on YOUR screen), and the server thinks they're somewhere else, and the person you're firing at thinks he's somewhere else AGAIN--then there's a major problem. Who's "point of view" do we accept? The server's? That would mean that we'd have to fire behind a fast-moving target to hit it, which would suck. It would also mean that people with high pings would be completely screwed--they'd never know where their opponent really was, because of lag, so they'd be firing at empty air most of the time (although to them it would look like their aim was perfect).
Client-side hit detection prevents this problem by ruling that, if it looks to YOU like you hit someone, then you did hit them. If from your perspective it looks like your aim was dead on, then *it was dead on*. If on the your computer your shot went through the enemy's face (even thought the server has the enemy down the hall, and the enemy thinks that he's round the corner), then the shot goes through the enemy's face, the server updates this fact, and the enemy learns about it on his next update (when he falls over dead).
Clearly, this isn't a perfect solution (because it leads to people with low pings being shot when from their perspective they've already run around a corner), and there's a long-running argument about whether this is a good thing or not which I won't get into here.
Ignoring that argument, however, if Natural Selection used client-side hit detection, there would be NO LAGGING HITBOX ISSUE. Full stop, end of story. Is that not correct? So, why isn't it using it?
Does that make sense to anyone? I don't really see a way that HLDS could include all the client-side predictions as well.
-calldown
Now however, it seems as if the server asks the enemy where he is first. Meaning it's dependant on where the enemy thinks he is, not on where the other client thinks he is.
Okay. Now we're getting somewhere. That's what I think has happened as well.
Does anyone know why this decision was made (to use server or target-based hit detection, not client-side)? Client-side hit detection was introduced into the Half-Life netcode to make fast-moving CS deatchmatches with bunny-hopping fairer to people with marginal pings. It seems incredibly ill-advised to not use it in Natural Selection, which has even faster moving things (lerks, skulks, blinking fades) which make hit-box lag a very serious problem.
Hello devs?
<a href='http://www.summerblue.net/games/cs_report/6_2_deflection.html' target='_blank'>Aimbot Missing Demo</a>
Only thing that was and is still in use are client side predictions (not detections). They work in similar way Calldown described... Your client extrapolates position of enemy based on last informations (direction, speed) and shows you image.. if he is not changing direction too quickly, chances are this "prediction" matches position of that player that will arrive to server, but since in combat skulks move with awesome speed and change direction quickly this system simply cant show you correct image everytime. Dont blame NS, dont blame steam.. although certainly some ways exists to soften the problem more, it has no real solution, it's not real "bug". People who dont play combat dont realize any changes between 2.0 and 3.0 hit detections and even majority players who play combat never noticed anything abnormal. I was regurally playing on server where everyone has ping around 20 (not LAN server) and nobody ever experienced these problems there..