I was going to go ahead and try to create a third-person shooter with WASD movement and mouse aiming/shooting, but I found out that on Battlenet there is a huge delay using these inputs.
I was told this is a common point of frustration with people trying to make custom games (and it certainly frustrated me), so does anybody following the issue know if Blizzard ever plans on fixing this? Is it just crappy programming on their part, or what?
The delay of 2 * ping is the delay you got from your connection's latency and the used architecture for the game. It's running synchronous while shooters run on a local data basis to display your mouse movement effects instead of waiting for the server to tell you where your mouse pointer is pointing at.
Starcraft 2 runs synchronized, so all players are at the same state of the game all the time and if one guy lags the complete game is delayed.
That's reasonable to use in strategy games.
This, obviously, doesn't work for very well for shooters, which makes it's impossible to make a shooter based on precision with that delay as long as you can't use the local, expected position of the enemy and until you get the verified server data.
Basically the whole architecture would need to be reprogrammed to make that work afaIk as seen in pretty much every shooter.
Sadly, SC2 limits these trigger inputs which is noticeable with the mouse moved event. Offline it's awesome and fast, online it's jumping because it updates only a few times per second. For example, if you play my diablo map, you will notice that your character doesn't run smoothly in a circle, if you move your mouse in a circle in battle.net. It's very smooth offline.
I don't know how much other inputs are delayed or limited, but I think key inputs are as fast as abilities in tests from what I've heard.
I can't tell anything about the mouse -> camera stuff every shooter uses, but I guess it might be delayed, too.
I also think that battle.net simulates a minimal ping of 125 ms or something like that like it did in SCBW.
There have been shooters that function on battle net. Take a look at bounty's maps. They just won't be super smooth. But they're playable (and fun) if you build them right. Like the previous poster said, Blizzard built sc2's infrastructure for starcraft 2. Not call of duty. It operates with the mentality of "keep everybody in sync 100% of the time, or else pause the game". Call of duty or halo use "update everybody's current position and movement every so often, and guestimate their current position during lag".
I tested my mouse-click attack controls on Battlenet, and even by myself I had a full second of delay before firing. To me, that isn't workable for any kind of shooter, and I wouldn't want to make it without mouse controls.
I don't mind working on a different project, I just don't know what to do. I'd appreciate any ideas, or even a pointer in the direction of something collaborative/work in progress. :D
I use WASD movement in my Ikari Warriors map, and I know for sure the latency is a huge problem once you play on BNet, whether you're alone or not. It's a very well-known issue that can't be dealt with. You can however optimize your triggers and coding to reduce the amount of data exchanged with the servers, improving both the general performance and allowing the game to be more responsive. So far, I wasn't able to reduce the lag as much as I wanted, my map is basically very hard to play in co-op if you're new to the game, just because of the latency... No matter how much effort I put on improving the scripts.
It's far from being unplayable though, there is a latency you need to get accustomed to if you want to survive more than 30 seconds... I tested my map a few times on BNet in singleplayer Insane mode, it was way harder but I was able to win nonetheless. I played with a friend, I was able to play fine but he was not. We played again 2 days later and it was a bit better. As I said, what matters is to reduce the amount of data sent to the servers, so basically just try to avoid as often as possible executing triggers every second, or any kind of horrible coding causing lags even offline...
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Hey all,
I was going to go ahead and try to create a third-person shooter with WASD movement and mouse aiming/shooting, but I found out that on Battlenet there is a huge delay using these inputs.
I was told this is a common point of frustration with people trying to make custom games (and it certainly frustrated me), so does anybody following the issue know if Blizzard ever plans on fixing this? Is it just crappy programming on their part, or what?
Thanks,
Wrath
The delay of 2 * ping is the delay you got from your connection's latency and the used architecture for the game. It's running synchronous while shooters run on a local data basis to display your mouse movement effects instead of waiting for the server to tell you where your mouse pointer is pointing at.
Starcraft 2 runs synchronized, so all players are at the same state of the game all the time and if one guy lags the complete game is delayed.
That's reasonable to use in strategy games.
This, obviously, doesn't work for very well for shooters, which makes it's impossible to make a shooter based on precision with that delay as long as you can't use the local, expected position of the enemy and until you get the verified server data.
Basically the whole architecture would need to be reprogrammed to make that work afaIk as seen in pretty much every shooter.
Sadly, SC2 limits these trigger inputs which is noticeable with the mouse moved event. Offline it's awesome and fast, online it's jumping because it updates only a few times per second. For example, if you play my diablo map, you will notice that your character doesn't run smoothly in a circle, if you move your mouse in a circle in battle.net. It's very smooth offline.
I don't know how much other inputs are delayed or limited, but I think key inputs are as fast as abilities in tests from what I've heard.
I can't tell anything about the mouse -> camera stuff every shooter uses, but I guess it might be delayed, too.
I also think that battle.net simulates a minimal ping of 125 ms or something like that like it did in SCBW.
@Ahli634: Go
I see... That's too bad. It looks like I will have to scrap my plans.
Time to start thinking of something new...
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There have been shooters that function on battle net. Take a look at bounty's maps. They just won't be super smooth. But they're playable (and fun) if you build them right. Like the previous poster said, Blizzard built sc2's infrastructure for starcraft 2. Not call of duty. It operates with the mentality of "keep everybody in sync 100% of the time, or else pause the game". Call of duty or halo use "update everybody's current position and movement every so often, and guestimate their current position during lag".
@zeldarules28: Go
I tested my mouse-click attack controls on Battlenet, and even by myself I had a full second of delay before firing. To me, that isn't workable for any kind of shooter, and I wouldn't want to make it without mouse controls.
I don't mind working on a different project, I just don't know what to do. I'd appreciate any ideas, or even a pointer in the direction of something collaborative/work in progress. :D
I use WASD movement in my Ikari Warriors map, and I know for sure the latency is a huge problem once you play on BNet, whether you're alone or not. It's a very well-known issue that can't be dealt with. You can however optimize your triggers and coding to reduce the amount of data exchanged with the servers, improving both the general performance and allowing the game to be more responsive. So far, I wasn't able to reduce the lag as much as I wanted, my map is basically very hard to play in co-op if you're new to the game, just because of the latency... No matter how much effort I put on improving the scripts.
It's far from being unplayable though, there is a latency you need to get accustomed to if you want to survive more than 30 seconds... I tested my map a few times on BNet in singleplayer Insane mode, it was way harder but I was able to win nonetheless. I played with a friend, I was able to play fine but he was not. We played again 2 days later and it was a bit better. As I said, what matters is to reduce the amount of data sent to the servers, so basically just try to avoid as often as possible executing triggers every second, or any kind of horrible coding causing lags even offline...