Re: NO REST FOR THE WICKED! -- Welcome to ROK[threadz]

[ Show ]

Support VoyForums

[ Shrink ]

VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 17:38:17 07/08/02 Mon
Author: just another gamer
Subject: Re: NO REST FOR THE WICKED!
In reply to: GOODIE 's message, "Re: NO REST FOR THE WICKED!" on 02:17:30 06/25/02 Tue

Epic on ZeroPing: Don't use it
A new Unreal Tournament mutator called ZeroPing has been making the rounds; the mod's developer, Jibe, claims that it provides "LAN-like performance over any Internet connection."

The mutator works by changing a basic element of the way that Unreal Tournament handles networking code, called "client-side hitscan." ZeroPing leaves it up to the individual client program to determine whether or not the player's shots have hit the intended targets, rather than leaving it up to the server. Obviously, this presents a potential problem: what if the UT client is inaccurate in its estimation?

It's for this reason that Epic Games' Cliff Bleszinski and Brandon Reinhart have both posted .plan file updates strongly recommending against the use of ZeroPing.

"ZeroPing makes bad players with bad network connections think they can play really well, at the expense of everyone else in the game," says Cliff Bleszinski. "If you want to clean up using ZP, join a server in eastern Europe. You'll whup ass because you'll be so lagged out."

"Ping is a fact of life; you can't make it disappear (and still have a fair game) with a few lines of UnrealScript trickery," continues Bleszinski. "While I commend the efforts of the author to attempt to make a smoother online experience, I believe that anyone who is serious about their gaming won't use this mod."

"Unreal Tournament server-authoritative netcode is that way for a reason. The author of Zero Ping seems to think that we didn't know what we were doing when we wrote it," adds Brandon Reinhart. "... Even though Zero Ping makes the game feel more responsive to the shooter, it detriments the victim. You might think you got out of the way ... hell the server might even agree that you DID get out of the way ... but Zero Ping ignores that and empowers the client's machine to make critical gameplay decisions."

Jibe is decidedly unfazed by the objections of the game's designer and programmer, and reminds people that what has been released so far is an alpha version only -- he plans to make other improvements that may improve ZeroPing's fairness farther down the road. "ZeroPing is an experiment, not a crusade," Jibe explains. "It may be that client-side hitscan's never been done because there's something horribly wrong with it; if so, I'll be happy to let it go -- you learn the most from the experiments that fail. But the hundreds of technical arguments I've read against ZP seem more like relfexes [sic] than anything else, and I've yet to hear any complaints that I don't feel I can address. I'm happy to have Epic in the conversation (although not quite in the format I'd prefer) because I suspect they'll present the harshest and most weighty objections."

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]