ScardyBobScardyBobJoin Date: 2009-11-25Member: 69528Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
<!--quoteo(post=1966156:date=Aug 23 2012, 08:48 AM:name=Spektor56)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Spektor56 @ Aug 23 2012, 08:48 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1966156"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->When i got into competitive counter-strike, i found anything above 60ms to be unacceptable. For some reason New York servers gave me low latency (20-30ms) but the hit registration was ######, and Chicago servers gave me nothing but headshots with 50ms, I guess the chicago connections are more stable (less jitter).<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> This.
You can and I have played games with ridiculous 300+ ping lag. However, that small, but not negligible, performance hit makes a difference competitively.
DghelneshiAims to surpass Fana in post edits.Join Date: 2011-11-01Member: 130634Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
edited August 2012
Yes, we're all part of an almighty master race because we were born a few years earlier than others. And then there's another master race above ours that was born even earlier. And then...
Wait, so what exactly is the purpose of this thread? Prove that the later you were born, the easier life has become for you (in certain/most aspects)?
<!--quoteo(post=1966288:date=Aug 24 2012, 02:38 AM:name=Soul_Rider)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Soul_Rider @ Aug 24 2012, 02:38 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1966288"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->It's called nostalgia, it's a sure sign of getting old, don't worry, everyone suffers from it eventually...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I miss the good old times...the first time playing online a shooter like hl1 in the year 1998 was so impressive for me that my phone bill for the first month with my dial up connection almost went up to 1000 Euro ! It was all so new for me...playing and chatting (irc and icq (which i hated)) with other people around the world...even met some people in real life then on LANs.
<!--quoteo(post=1966283:date=Aug 24 2012, 02:10 AM:name=Dghelneshi)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Dghelneshi @ Aug 24 2012, 02:10 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1966283"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Yes, we're all part of an almighty master race because we were born a few years earlier than others. And then there's another master race above ours that was born even earlier. And then...
Wait, so what exactly is the purpose of this thread? Prove that the later you were born, the easier life has become for you (in certain/most aspects)?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Actually, it was to demonstrate that games made more than 10 years ago were playable at pings which many people now regard as "unplayable". It was meant to shut those people up. I'm only 23, some of the people who posted in this thread seem like they're 40 or something.
Soul_RiderMod BeanJoin Date: 2004-06-19Member: 29388Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
And whats wrong with that? NS has a very old playerbase. Even the original game was a mature gamer base, all the kids played CS! A lot of us were within a few years either side of Charlie, and he's 39 now!
NS has been around for 11 years now, and still retained a lot of it's fans, even though they may not be as active as they once were. Just look at the birthdays on the bottom of the forum page when you arrive each day, you'll see a lot of older ages, apart for the younger influxes over the past couple of years :)
Expect lots of nostalgia on this forum, hahaha. It's why everyone cries out for NS1, it reminds them of their youth, haha.
<!--quoteo(post=1966378:date=Aug 24 2012, 01:23 PM:name=Soul_Rider)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Soul_Rider @ Aug 24 2012, 01:23 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1966378"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Expect lots of nostalgia on this forum, hahaha. It's why everyone cries out for NS1, it reminds them of their youth, haha.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yes thats the point lol :) Life was so easy back in time :)
<!--quoteo(post=1966377:date=Aug 24 2012, 06:18 AM:name=Imbalanxd)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Imbalanxd @ Aug 24 2012, 06:18 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1966377"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Actually, it was to demonstrate that games made more than 10 years ago were playable at pings which many people now regard as "unplayable".<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
300 ms ping in half-life was attrocious without lag correction and only playable with lag correction if you really didn't know any better.
I went from 56 k modem to fibre in like 2000-2001 or something(it was after latency compensation was introduced into half-life), it was a huge difference.
Latency is especially bad in melee games and whenever player hulls collide(that was true in NS 1. I don't think I've ever had a satisfying game of NS with more than 100 ms latency).
Played NS1 with upwards of 250 ping when I used to scrim with the koreans, and yea the game gets bad >200 IMO. its still playable but you need to be 100x more precise and sure of exactly what your doing. Bullet counting a skulk to where you stop shooting 200+ms early to have it not die and kill you gets frustrating quickly.
IMO however anything under 200 is playable and can be adapted to. In NS2 it has more of an effect than it should due to the FPS loss that comes with the ping disadvantage.
DghelneshiAims to surpass Fana in post edits.Join Date: 2011-11-01Member: 130634Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow
<!--quoteo(post=1966377:date=Aug 24 2012, 01:18 PM:name=Imbalanxd)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Imbalanxd @ Aug 24 2012, 01:18 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1966377"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Actually, it was to demonstrate that games made more than 10 years ago were playable at pings which many people now regard as "unplayable". It was meant to shut those people up. I'm only 23, some of the people who posted in this thread seem like they're 40 or something.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> So, you're "demonstrating" that lag compensation techniques were <b>better</b> in the old days when noone even knew what the ###### he was doing instead of today where things like that have been tested and tried over and over again? Apparently, programmers must be incapable of learning or rather have some kind of dementia that makes things <b>worse</b> over time.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
edited August 2012
<!--quoteo(post=1966377:date=Aug 24 2012, 04:18 AM:name=Imbalanxd)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Imbalanxd @ Aug 24 2012, 04:18 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1966377"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Actually, it was to demonstrate that games made more than 10 years ago were playable at pings which many people now regard as "unplayable".<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> *remembers games with quake 2 lithium and action quake..* NOPE! Latency heavily influenced those games too! Anything over 100 meant teleporting players and having to aim 15 persons ahead to get a shot, something that great players ending up learning and compensating for.. Though the netcode wasnt the best..
TalesinOur own little well of hateJoin Date: 2002-11-08Member: 7710NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators
Bah, BNC was easy if you used vampire taps.
And yes, I too see many people whining about over 20fps being 'unplayable', and just remember back to the days of the Monster3D, when 8fps was standard and 20-30fps was buttery-smooth and must have cost them a good few thousand dollars (accounting for inflation, that'd be 5-8K). Now we get spoiled brats expecting 45fps as 'barely playable', making me want to slap them and make them use a 386SX/12 for a few days. Or an acoustic coupler to get online. Or to diagnose an IRQ/memory range conflict... with motherboard jumpers.
Yes, the point is 'you have it good, whining about frankly stellar performance just makes you look like a gormless twit, now stop embarrassing yourself and go finish watching Spongebob'.
<!--quoteo(post=1966489:date=Aug 24 2012, 10:19 PM:name=Dghelneshi)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Dghelneshi @ Aug 24 2012, 10:19 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1966489"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->So, you're "demonstrating" that lag compensation techniques were <b>better</b> in the old days when noone even knew what the ###### he was doing instead of today where things like that have been tested and tried over and over again? Apparently, programmers must be incapable of learning or rather have some kind of dementia that makes things <b>worse</b> over time.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Ok, maybe I didn't make this clear enough... I thought you would make the connection, this being a NS2 general discussion forum and all, but let me try again.
When I play THIS GAME (NS2) and I complain about how incomprehensible the game is at high latency, people inform me that it is because my ping is too high. I am simply stating that they must be 14 years of age, as they have never experienced anything other than sub 50 pings. 10 years ago, games such as half life, and in fact even natural selection 1, compensated pings in excess of 300 flawlessly. Does this mean that the game ran completely smoothly as if I had 10 ms? No, of course not, it just means that if I shot someone, they took damage on my client, on the server, and on their client, there were few discrepancies.
This doesn't mean that all modern games suffer from bad compensation. Battlefield games have been almost entirely eliminating the effects of latency for a while now (at least the visual effects). All it means is this games performance under high latency is not exclusively the fault of the high latency.
Well honestly the netcode in gldsource is superior to source, only quake has managed to atleast maintain its netcode. Alot of new games have had major netcode issues on release, and many have maintained those issues throughout the game.
And yea posts like the one above are <!--coloro:red--><span style="color:red"><!--/coloro-->Keep it civil. -Talesin<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> and prove absolutely nothing.
all of this debate doesn't matter because this game is supposed to cater to 14 year olds NOW. and 14 year olds right now don't care that you played MUDs on your 14.4k modem and by god, it was good enough for me to get a field of ascii text 2 seconds after i typed "go east".
this game is trying to make it in a modern era where a certain level of performance is EXPECTED, especially of indie games.
<!--quoteo(post=1966523:date=Aug 25 2012, 08:52 AM:name=xDragon)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (xDragon @ Aug 25 2012, 08:52 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1966523"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->only quake has managed to atleast maintain its netcode. A<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Quake live didn't maintain the Quake netcode, it swapped to goldsrc/source style lag compensation. All the previous Quake games had no lag compensation, the "boink" in Q3 was an attempt to work around this by giving you feedback when you were leading your target by the right amount.
<!--quoteo(post=1966515:date=Aug 24 2012, 05:18 PM:name=Talesin)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Talesin @ Aug 24 2012, 05:18 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1966515"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->And yes, I too see many people whining about over 20fps being 'unplayable'<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Because it is. We don't want to and can't go back to the bad old days when it was amazing just to have something work at all and gameplay mechanics had to be designed around attrocious performance.
People have options, if NS2 performance is too poor they exercise those options and go play some other game.
<!--quoteo(post=1966515:date=Aug 24 2012, 05:18 PM:name=Talesin)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Talesin @ Aug 24 2012, 05:18 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1966515"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->and just remember back to the days of the Monster3D, when 8fps was standard and 20-30fps was buttery-smooth and must have cost them a good few thousand dollars (accounting for inflation, that'd be 5-8K).<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I remember playing wolfenstein 3d on a (10 MHz?) 286. You just expanded the border a bit and it comfortably ran at 20-30 FPS. And once again, the game was designed for poor performance; you just had to aim vaguely at an enemy and they moved predictably and slowly.
In NS2, players move fast and unpredictably and have fairly precise hit boxes.
<!--quoteo(post=1966515:date=Aug 24 2012, 05:18 PM:name=Talesin)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Talesin @ Aug 24 2012, 05:18 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1966515"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Now we get spoiled brats expecting 45fps as 'barely playable', making me want to slap them and make them use a 386SX/12 for a few days.[...] Or to diagnose an IRQ/memory range conflict... with motherboard jumpers.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I've done that. Like it or not, you get graded on a curve. You're out of your mind if you're comparing NS2 to games from the early 90's instead of <b>contemporary games</b>.
Wolfenstein, doom, doom II, duke 3d, Rise of the triad, blood, nearly all early FPS had vertical auto-aim, a huge enemy hitbox and sluggish enemies. That was to deal with the mediocre ~30 FPS performance and clunky interface.
I frankly don't know what he's talking about. Maybe I blinked and missed it, I played quake and duke 3d on a pentium mmx. Didn't have a lot of money for a new PC and didn't pay much attention to what was happening with PC gaming until some time after half-life was released. During this gap, maybe there was a PC gaming dark age and 8 FPS became standard; but it wasn't before and it wasn't after.
Riva TNT2 M64 was my first 3d graphics card, in late 1999 I think. It was a real crummy budget card but you just picked a sensible resolution and it was still decently competent for unreal tournament, half-life(HLDM, CS, NS, science and industry...) and anything else I cared to play. Spent much of my budget on a decent CPU instead.
<!--quoteo(post=1966618:date=Aug 25 2012, 09:45 AM:name=Soylent_green)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Soylent_green @ Aug 25 2012, 09:45 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1966618"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Wolfenstein, doom, doom II, duke 3d, Rise of the triad, blood, nearly all early FPS had vertical auto-aim, a huge enemy hitbox and sluggish enemies. That was to deal with the mediocre ~30 FPS performance and clunky interface.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> I thought it was to deal with everyone using the keyboard arrows to turn and aim.
fanaticThis post has been edited.Join Date: 2003-07-23Member: 18377Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
edited August 2012
<!--quoteo(post=1966515:date=Aug 24 2012, 11:18 PM:name=Talesin)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Talesin @ Aug 24 2012, 11:18 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1966515"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->now stop embarrassing yourself<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Comparing performance expectations from more than 15 years ago to performance expectations today is hilariously pointless. Maybe you should take your own advice.
<!--quoteo(post=1966641:date=Aug 25 2012, 06:08 AM:name=Align)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Align @ Aug 25 2012, 06:08 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1966641"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I thought it was to deal with everyone using the keyboard arrows to turn and aim.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->That was to deal with the mediocre ~30 FPS performance <b>and clunky interface</b>.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
ArgathorJoin Date: 2011-07-18Member: 110942Members, Squad Five Blue
I clearly missed this gaming dark age too. I used to get 100-120 ping with my 36k modem and 90-110 with my 56k modem in the early CS days. Along with considerably higher FPS than I currently get with NS2.
<!--quoteo(post=1966657:date=Aug 25 2012, 03:12 PM:name=Argathor)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Argathor @ Aug 25 2012, 03:12 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1966657"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I clearly missed this gaming dark age too. I used to get 100-120 ping with my 36k modem and 90-110 with my 56k modem in the early CS days. Along with considerably higher FPS than I currently get with NS2.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> 100-120 ping with a 36k modem sure :) The best ping i got with 56k modem on a HLDM/CS server in my hometown was about 150-180.
I think some of you are confusing ping and bandwidth. I had no problem playing NS1 on 56k. A few times we even tried to play with two PCs over one connection, admittedly that didn't work so well. :)
Comments
This.
You can and I have played games with ridiculous 300+ ping lag. However, that small, but not negligible, performance hit makes a difference competitively.
Played the original Unreal Tournament on dialup. You had to aim ahead of each person to hit them... good times
Wait, so what exactly is the purpose of this thread? Prove that the later you were born, the easier life has become for you (in certain/most aspects)?
I miss the good old times...the first time playing online a shooter like hl1 in the year 1998 was so impressive for me that my phone bill for the first month with my dial up connection almost went up to 1000 Euro !
It was all so new for me...playing and chatting (irc and icq (which i hated)) with other people around the world...even met some people in real life then on LANs.
And yes its a sign of getting old ....
Wait, so what exactly is the purpose of this thread? Prove that the later you were born, the easier life has become for you (in certain/most aspects)?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Actually, it was to demonstrate that games made more than 10 years ago were playable at pings which many people now regard as "unplayable". It was meant to shut those people up. I'm only 23, some of the people who posted in this thread seem like they're 40 or something.
NS has been around for 11 years now, and still retained a lot of it's fans, even though they may not be as active as they once were. Just look at the birthdays on the bottom of the forum page when you arrive each day, you'll see a lot of older ages, apart for the younger influxes over the past couple of years :)
Expect lots of nostalgia on this forum, hahaha. It's why everyone cries out for NS1, it reminds them of their youth, haha.
While some games are very playable with high pings, others are not.
Yes thats the point lol :)
Life was so easy back in time :)
300 ms ping in half-life was attrocious without lag correction and only playable with lag correction if you really didn't know any better.
I went from 56 k modem to fibre in like 2000-2001 or something(it was after latency compensation was introduced into half-life), it was a huge difference.
Latency is especially bad in melee games and whenever player hulls collide(that was true in NS 1. I don't think I've ever had a satisfying game of NS with more than 100 ms latency).
IMO however anything under 200 is playable and can be adapted to. In NS2 it has more of an effect than it should due to the FPS loss that comes with the ping disadvantage.
So, you're "demonstrating" that lag compensation techniques were <b>better</b> in the old days when noone even knew what the ###### he was doing instead of today where things like that have been tested and tried over and over again? Apparently, programmers must be incapable of learning or rather have some kind of dementia that makes things <b>worse</b> over time.
*remembers games with quake 2 lithium and action quake..*
NOPE!
Latency heavily influenced those games too!
Anything over 100 meant teleporting players and having to aim 15 persons ahead to get a shot, something that great players ending up learning and compensating for..
Though the netcode wasnt the best..
nostalgic video:
<a href="http://youtu.be/FqOnty5VKHs" target="_blank">http://youtu.be/FqOnty5VKHs</a>
And yes, I too see many people whining about over 20fps being 'unplayable', and just remember back to the days of the Monster3D, when 8fps was standard and 20-30fps was buttery-smooth and must have cost them a good few thousand dollars (accounting for inflation, that'd be 5-8K). Now we get spoiled brats expecting 45fps as 'barely playable', making me want to slap them and make them use a 386SX/12 for a few days. Or an acoustic coupler to get online. Or to diagnose an IRQ/memory range conflict... with motherboard jumpers.
Yes, the point is 'you have it good, whining about frankly stellar performance just makes you look like a gormless twit, now stop embarrassing yourself and go finish watching Spongebob'.
Ok, maybe I didn't make this clear enough... I thought you would make the connection, this being a NS2 general discussion forum and all, but let me try again.
When I play THIS GAME (NS2) and I complain about how incomprehensible the game is at high latency, people inform me that it is because my ping is too high. I am simply stating that they must be 14 years of age, as they have never experienced anything other than sub 50 pings. 10 years ago, games such as half life, and in fact even natural selection 1, compensated pings in excess of 300 flawlessly. Does this mean that the game ran completely smoothly as if I had 10 ms? No, of course not, it just means that if I shot someone, they took damage on my client, on the server, and on their client, there were few discrepancies.
This doesn't mean that all modern games suffer from bad compensation. Battlefield games have been almost entirely eliminating the effects of latency for a while now (at least the visual effects). All it means is this games performance under high latency is not exclusively the fault of the high latency.
And yea posts like the one above are <!--coloro:red--><span style="color:red"><!--/coloro-->Keep it civil. -Talesin<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> and prove absolutely nothing.
this game is trying to make it in a modern era where a certain level of performance is EXPECTED, especially of indie games.
Quake live didn't maintain the Quake netcode, it swapped to goldsrc/source style lag compensation. All the previous Quake games had no lag compensation, the "boink" in Q3 was an attempt to work around this by giving you feedback when you were leading your target by the right amount.
What are you still doing on my lawn, you hobo. Also, do you actually play NS2 or are you just here to annoy the hell out of the people who do and can't get a good experience going due to performance? Cause it seems a little like that. And 8 FPS has never been standard in the-old-days©.
Because it is. We don't want to and can't go back to the bad old days when it was amazing just to have something work at all and gameplay mechanics had to be designed around attrocious performance.
People have options, if NS2 performance is too poor they exercise those options and go play some other game.
<!--quoteo(post=1966515:date=Aug 24 2012, 05:18 PM:name=Talesin)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Talesin @ Aug 24 2012, 05:18 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1966515"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->and just remember back to the days of the Monster3D, when 8fps was standard and 20-30fps was buttery-smooth and must have cost them a good few thousand dollars (accounting for inflation, that'd be 5-8K).<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I remember playing wolfenstein 3d on a (10 MHz?) 286. You just expanded the border a bit and it comfortably ran at 20-30 FPS. And once again, the game was designed for poor performance; you just had to aim vaguely at an enemy and they moved predictably and slowly.
In NS2, players move fast and unpredictably and have fairly precise hit boxes.
<!--quoteo(post=1966515:date=Aug 24 2012, 05:18 PM:name=Talesin)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Talesin @ Aug 24 2012, 05:18 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1966515"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Now we get spoiled brats expecting 45fps as 'barely playable', making me want to slap them and make them use a 386SX/12 for a few days.[...] Or to diagnose an IRQ/memory range conflict... with motherboard jumpers.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I've done that. Like it or not, you get graded on a curve. You're out of your mind if you're comparing NS2 to games from the early 90's instead of <b>contemporary games</b>.
Wolfenstein, doom, doom II, duke 3d, Rise of the triad, blood, nearly all early FPS had vertical auto-aim, a huge enemy hitbox and sluggish enemies. That was to deal with the mediocre ~30 FPS performance and clunky interface.
I frankly don't know what he's talking about. Maybe I blinked and missed it, I played quake and duke 3d on a pentium mmx. Didn't have a lot of money for a new PC and didn't pay much attention to what was happening with PC gaming until some time after half-life was released. During this gap, maybe there was a PC gaming dark age and 8 FPS became standard; but it wasn't before and it wasn't after.
Riva TNT2 M64 was my first 3d graphics card, in late 1999 I think. It was a real crummy budget card but you just picked a sensible resolution and it was still decently competent for unreal tournament, half-life(HLDM, CS, NS, science and industry...) and anything else I cared to play. Spent much of my budget on a decent CPU instead.
I thought it was to deal with everyone using the keyboard arrows to turn and aim.
Comparing performance expectations from more than 15 years ago to performance expectations today is hilariously pointless. Maybe you should take your own advice.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->That was to deal with the mediocre ~30 FPS performance <b>and clunky interface</b>.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
100-120 ping with a 36k modem sure :)
The best ping i got with 56k modem on a HLDM/CS server in my hometown was about 150-180.