Remove client side effects such as damage

[eNTi]

...of course when I say "a system that will eventually get around this issue" I really mean "a piece of toast", and when I say "currently working on" I really mean "eating".

The first part is true though.

so you are basically saying you are eating quantum entangled toast? also, stop trolling or you will have to ban yourself!

on a more serious note... the problem with the client side calculation is actually twofold. it ties in with my the missing projectiles bug i was reporting. sometimes you will be hit by multiple projectiles server side, which the client didn't predict. the damage would register but you wont get any feedback other than you dropping dead in an instant or at least be very low on health all of a sudden.

[Izeo]

Networking is something that is a tiny bit over my head, but I had what I felt could be, not necessarily a solution, but a slight improvement.

The problems of the client taking damage by both the server and the local behavior definitely has downsides, as SilentEye said:
- it gives you a heart attack sometimes (you see your hp drop to 0 from a single hoverbot laser, and then you have to wonder for a while if you will indeed die or if your hp will update back up)
- it actually adds a probably unintentional level of difficulty, mostly affecting low level players

I'm all for difficulty. If I could choose to make or play a game, and I had to pick between VERY EASY, or VERY FRUSTRATING AND DIFFICULT I would choose the latter. However, in this case, the difficulty is the result of something that feels incorrect.

What I'm talking about precisely is when your legs are damaged on your client side, by for example aggressors. The most likely place to notice this is a low level fighting aggressors. Imagine you are a low level character in the sewers. Two captains spawn on you when you don't expect it, and begin shooting you. You begin to run. Your legs are shot, which slows down your runspeed. You JUST make it to the door, when your HP/status updates from the server -- your legs are healed! Your legs were never broken according to the server. However, you still took so much damage while moving slowly on your client, and you die before you make it through the door. This means you were punished for LOCAL dicerolls and not server dicerolls, which is maybe a little bit unfair.

However, there are benefits to receiving "double damage" on your client, and that is, you can sometimes test your durability a bit. If you get hit on your client by peeking out of a corner for a second by a laser to the face, freak out, and then back behind cover, you might find that your HP goes back to full and you never got hit, probably because you didn't peek out far enough (or for long enough) according to the server in order to be hit. This is actually a nice (even though it's sort of "cheating" in a way, hehe) advantage to this feature.

So, the possible improvement I thought of is this:

Your true HP is represented by the server, as it is now. However, what if when we take damage on the client, instead of behaving the same way as "real" missing HP (and injuries i.e. broken legs), it instead just is illustrated on the health bar as a different shade of green.

I don't really feel like drawing an image right now but here goes

Let's say I have 500 out of 800 health. My HP looks like this

####################------------

Let's then say that I take 700 damage on my client, from a hovereye shooting my legs. Then, the first 100 HP is still colored as the solid green, the 700 client side damage is represented as shaded darker, like this.

####:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::------------

even though it broke my legs on my client, I shouldn't yet get the movespeed penalty, because it's not confirmed by the server yet. It's just a 'guess' of "hey, look out, your health MIGHT be this low"

anytime the server updates your 'real' HP, any 'client dmg hp' gets wiped. If the server updates, and I was lucky and I never actually got shot at all, then it just goes back to the first bar. If I did get hit, however, then it wipes the client dmg and updates my real health

####-------------------------------------

now I'm almost dead, and NOW since my legs are broken, confirmed by the server, now I walk slowly.

[nabbl]

haha nice idea :P

You could call it "the dodge-effect".. You got a certain chance that you're health gets resetted and excuse a buggy game behaviour with that.

[SilentEye]

I appreciate the well thought out sugestion Izeo, but I'm still of the opinion that there should simply be no client side generated attacks from monsters.

If the server does not send out an attack signal there should be no attacks on the client which equals, no bouncing health.

[Ivan Eres]

I don't think a a multiplayer game is possible nowadays without client side calculations. At least not without quantum entangled toast, that is.

So optimizations yes, remove completely - no.

[SynC_187]

I appreciate the well thought out sugestion Izeo, but I'm still of the opinion that there should simply be no client side generated attacks from monsters.

If the server does not send out an attack signal there should be no attacks on the client which equals, no bouncing health.

The problem is that this netcode is what makes a FPS stand apart from an RPG. Yes Neocron doesn't do it as well as modern mainstream FPS', but I would prefer my health to bounce than not realise I'm being attacked until I suddenly drop dead, which is what would happen to anyone with a bad connection/lag without the clientside prediction.

You have a choice, health that goes down suddenly (depending on the lag you could suddenly receive a large number of hits at once), or health that goes down as a warning of what is happening and then corrects itself.

I acknowledge that neither is ideal, but I don't see a big revamp of the netcode happening, so it's a case of the lesser of two evils.

[Eternal Pink]

We've all had this but there's something I've noticed recently on my tank that doesn't quite add up on the client/server damage rules/override.

I've been using a doom beamer in chaos caves for levelling and once in a while I will accidentally hit myself, since i'm wearing camo PA and carbon armor getting smacked by a artifact doom beamer hurts ( a lot ) and since its due to me misfiring and hitting myself that damage should stay.

Yet quite often it doesn't and I bounce back up to full health.

So is the server deciding that actually my shot didn't go astray (not noticed mobs taking damage when this happens) or is it just discounting (wrongly) the damage I've done to myself with a full on doom beamer hit on my client?

[eNTi]

The problem is that this netcode is what makes a FPS stand apart from an RPG. Yes Neocron doesn't do it as well as modern mainstream FPS', but I would prefer my health to bounce than not realise I'm being attacked until I suddenly drop dead, which is what would happen to anyone with a bad connection/lag without the clientside prediction.

You have a choice, health that goes down suddenly (depending on the lag you could suddenly receive a large number of hits at once), or health that goes down as a warning of what is happening and then corrects itself.

I acknowledge that neither is ideal, but I don't see a big revamp of the netcode happening, so it's a case of the lesser of two evils.

actually prediction doesn't fix anything. it just shifts the problem. i still die from damage spikes. not because the server lagged (even though that still happens occasionally) but rather because the client made a wrong prediction. this happens much more often than you might think. since i'm hunting a lot of fire mobs and dodge much around edges where prediction becomes unreliable. very unreliable. the mob's ai also seem to use some kind of prediction that thinks it can hit you when in reality it doesn't. that's why grim reapers/chasers are easy as pie to take down. if i guess correctly prediction happens on a bounding box (sphere) center to bounding box (sphere) center los algorithm and that's a very imprecise way to do things in an fps. since players actively got 3 hit zones it's even more buggy. grim persecutors fire on all 3 hit zones at once, but chasers only hit one zone and often shoot against walls because of that. to "fix" the issue life and damage had been raised significantly which makes it nigh impossible for apus to hunt anything. you are basically one shot by those mobs. they fixed bad design due to engine limitations with more bad design.

lag still kills you even though you are sometimes saved by client side prediction. i still believe it's not worth it especially since you are sometimes killed by the same prediction.

[Netphreak]

We've all had this but there's something I've noticed recently on my tank that doesn't quite add up on the client/server damage rules/override.

I've been using a doom beamer in chaos caves for levelling and once in a while I will accidentally hit myself, since i'm wearing camo PA and carbon armor getting smacked by a artifact doom beamer hurts ( a lot ) and since its due to me misfiring and hitting myself that damage should stay.

Yet quite often it doesn't and I bounce back up to full health.

So is the server deciding that actually my shot didn't go astray (not noticed mobs taking damage when this happens) or is it just discounting (wrongly) the damage I've done to myself with a full on doom beamer hit on my client?

I've noticed strangeness like that before awell.
Main issue these days is when say leveling at mb bunker and you take 2 successive hits from launchers within 1-2 seconds and you die. Even though used easily survive 2 hits if there was enough time between shots for the hp bounce/client-server sync to happen.

[Ivan Eres]

We've all had this but there's something I've noticed recently on my tank that doesn't quite add up on the client/server damage rules/override.

I've been using a doom beamer in chaos caves for levelling and once in a while I will accidentally hit myself, since i'm wearing camo PA and carbon armor getting smacked by a artifact doom beamer hurts ( a lot ) and since its due to me misfiring and hitting myself that damage should stay.

Yet quite often it doesn't and I bounce back up to full health.

So is the server deciding that actually my shot didn't go astray (not noticed mobs taking damage when this happens) or is it just discounting (wrongly) the damage I've done to myself with a full on doom beamer hit on my client?

I get the same reproducable effect with an AoE drone like the RG or RK. If a shot hits the ground before me my health bounces back as if nothing happened. After 2-3 more shots it starts to register the health loss.

The location was Chaos Caves too.

[SilentEye]

That's a good point to add. Drone health is actually server side. You don't have bouncing there.

Now tell me honestly, doesn't that play a lot nicer?

[CritiNator]

That's a good point to add. Drone health is actually server side. You don't have bouncing there.

Now tell me honestly, doesn't that play a lot nicer?

And yet we have all those threads about drones losing 30%+ damage suddenly and then explode.