[00276][R#178] Mob damage rebound

[Divide]

Health bouncing has existed in some form since beta. It is my understanding that the client and server both perform resist checks & damage calculations. The problem being that the two don't align, even though they both have the ability to deeply impact your situation. Broken legs that aren't broken, amirite?!?!

If you do happen to die due to a calculation issue where a mismatch has taken place, if the server believes you are still alive, you can relog and your char will indeed be alive.

This is legacy behavior from the days when compute, latency, and bandwidth demands were insurmountable for everyone but industry leaders like IBM & MS. You had to give the client some amount of responsibility when your pipe was 10megs at absolute best and your entire server farm was built on Willamette or Northwood-based Xeons that were great at heating up a room but left a bit to be desired otherwise.

[Netphreak]

For me, this issue is currently worse than I ever remember it being and really impacts every aspect of the game play/experience.
As the poster above pointed out one of the annoying things that happens due to this is your legs will break from a hit that shouldn't have broken then thus making you not able to run to cover. If you combine this with taking a hit which takes 500+ of your health (which after the bounce will have only taken
less than 100), you get crippled can't get out of the way for the next volley which hits before the client has corrected itself (the bounce) which once again hits for 500+ damage (even though it should be less than 100) you die. No chance of escape, nothing to do with bad resists or anything, purely due to the delay/bounce.

While I appreciate that neocron is running an ancient engine, surely there is a way to drastically reduce the delay /client updates from the server.

Outside of weapon and mob damage balancing this is something that really holds back the game potential.

[Doc Holliday]

Has happened to me twice in regants legacy. On a tank wearing full kevlar armour and Camo PA and also a PE wearing the same. The genotoxic crawler comes over and lays a hit on me. My health plummets to 30hp or so (enough so 2 sections of the body are fully damaged and health is in red) and stays there for a few seconds before bouncing back up to a full amount or reasonably close.

Both characters have a minimum of 40 in poison specced in natural resists and then all the armour calculation on top.

[William Antrim]

Would it help if more mob damage was over time and less burst damage? to give the server chance to correct it I mean?

[Netphreak]

I think the client update rate really just needs to be somehow increased.

[William Antrim]

I am sure our pcs could handle it.

[Divide]

I am sure our pcs could handle it.

The sustained data rate for the NC client is well below the real-world speeds that a 56k modem could deliver. We could definitely handle it.

[Netphreak]

The sustained data rate for the NC client is well below the real-world speeds that a 56k modem could deliver. We could definitely handle it.

There are commands/values in the net.ini file

//maximum bandwidth for each client
set net_maxclientbw 2000

From a quick google search it appears that this related to 2000 bytes bandwidth.
I'm not sure is this command even does anything or if it is all controlled server-side now but 2Kb is less than 56K could provide.
I'm rather curious if this value has been increased to be more inline with the bandwidth of internet connections we now have.


There's also this other value/command

//maximum time between player full updates(in secs)
set net_playerupdtime 2.0

Which I hope isn't used any longer as that allows up to 2 seconds between player full updates which could be one of the reasons for the health bounce issue.

[Alduin]

The net.ini file is mostly obsolete, because the settings are enforced code-wise. Increasing the update rate does not solve the problem itself it just makes it less visible in the best case. On top it increases the load on the server side by a non negligible amount. The relation between between update rate and cpu load is not linear.
Interpolation and prediction are still done in every networked game. In fact: most of the information has still to be predicted by the client, even in the age of mbit lines. The issue with bouncing help is that client and server predict something different.
We already started to adress the issue of prediction, but fixing it will take quite some time, there are simply far too many interdependencies.

[Netphreak]

The net.ini file is mostly obsolete, because the settings are enforced code-wise. Increasing the update rate does not solve the problem itself it just makes it less visible in the best case. On top it increases the load on the server side by a non negligible amount. The relation between between update rate and cpu load is not linear.
Interpolation and prediction are still done in every networked game. In fact: most of the information has still to be predicted by the client, even in the age of mbit lines. The issue with bouncing help is that client and server predict something different.
We already started to adress the issue of prediction, but fixing it will take quite some time, there are simply far too many interdependencies.

As always thanks for taking the time and commenting on this Alduin.
It's good to have to clarification and to know that you are well aware of the issue and have already been looking into fixing it.

[William Antrim]

This problem can be reproduced every time you exit an unsuccessful hack.

[Dropout]

This problem can be reproduced every time you exit an unsuccessful hack.

Uh yeah, thats true!
Man.. There's so many bugs in this game I dont even notice anymore...