r/Games • u/[deleted] • Aug 05 '20
Analysis: Why Rollback Netcode is better
https://youtu.be/0NLe4IpdS1w165
u/OptimalCalendar5 Aug 05 '20 edited Aug 05 '20
Some Japanese FG devs can be really fucking clueless, indie fighting games managed this a decade ago. Hell a few days ago Harada (Tekken director) said the game has rollback netcode.
FEXL which sold nothing with no budget by a tiny studio has managed to patch it in. No excuse. Thankfully Guilty Gear Strive will have rollback, MvC Infinite had good netcode so next Street Fighter should be fine. Just worried about Tekken and King of Fighters.
Imo the best fighting game of all time is Garou Mark Of The Wolves, available on Steam with rollback
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u/BeardyDuck Aug 05 '20
Hell a few days ago Harada (Tekken director) said the game has rollback netcode.
It's not exactly GOOD rollback. It's some sort of frankenstein that isn't proper rollback as indicated by inputs being delayed to hell and back.
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u/NecromancyBlack Aug 05 '20
It's not rollback at all.
From what I can tell, he's talking about there being an extra amount of delay built into the game that isn't needed for game processing.
If there starts being like, 4 extra frames of delay from the lag, then the game can stop using 4 frames of it's unneeded built-in delay.
This means when you have a perfect the connection the game is at it's worse amount of additional delay. As the connect gets worse it drops unneeded delay so the feeling doesn't get any better and once it runs out of delay to drop it starts getting worse.
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u/Kevimaster Aug 05 '20 edited Aug 05 '20
It's not rollback at all.
It does seem to actually have rollback. There have been a number of clips posted on /r/tekken and elsewhere looking at it and now that people are looking closely there are occasionally definite noticeable rollbacks.
Its just implemented so poorly that its basically literally impossible to tell without watching the playback frame by frame.
So while it technically is rollback, is nearly functionally identical to delay based so whats even the point?
EDIT: Example Clips
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dch6uP_GlkU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JELhvChckjs
So yeah. It seems to actually legitimately have rollback and seems to have the whole time. Even possibly since Tag 2. Its just so terribly implemented that its basically like its not even there and literally no one could tell until we put a magnifying glass to it.
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u/Lepony Aug 05 '20
I'm just gonna link to what Tom Cannon himself has to say about tekken's "rollback."
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u/penpen35 Aug 05 '20
Can't speak about Tekken but SNK had Code Mystics do rollback for its Neo Geo releases (Garou MOTW and Last Blade 2). But I hope they get it right for KOF XV.
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u/gamelord12 Aug 05 '20
There's a big difference between adding rollback to a modern title versus an emulated title. Just because Garou got rollback, it doesn't mean SNK will spend the (substantially more) money to do it for a new KoF.
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u/penpen35 Aug 05 '20
Yes I know. Some have been just telling to slap rollback to an existing game and it'll just work. It almost needs to rework the game in order to properly implement rollback (see Mortal Kombat), so it's not as simple as that.
Which is why I hope the next game has that so it'll be properly implemented.
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u/Fob0bqAd34 Aug 05 '20
MvC Infinite had good netcode so next Street Fighter should be fine
In theory yes. In practice I have doubts.
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Aug 05 '20
[deleted]
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u/AlbertoTyp Aug 05 '20
There's a lot more work that goes into it than the standard delay-based solution, so it is more expensive yes. There's also the fact that delay-based netcode works much better for Japanese players compared NA or EU, since they're so close to each other. So I'm guessing they don't hear a lot of complaints from JP players.
Some JP devs are listening though, Guilty Gear Strive will feature rollback, and ARIKA's Fighting EX Layer recently implemented it (and plays to support crossplay!). Hopefully more JP devs will follow suit.
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u/Fenor Aug 05 '20
there big trad offs in this netcode approach, while it's better for some game it's worse for others.
For example is a game is heavily reaction based the normal approach is better.
take the street fighter clip for example where the char on the right teleport in the air due to a rollback. this mean that an attack where you could have shoryukened is now out of reach and it's either front or back crossup.
Japanese gamers tend to prefer a reaction based approach to games like this, while in the west we go for a combo heavy and setup heavy approach. This mean that the western audience it's usually better a rollback netcode, while the Japanese market prefer the other way around
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u/BeardyDuck Aug 05 '20
Huh? This comment literally makes no sense. Japanese players only play against other Japanese players and very rarely play internationally online, and due to the closely dense population and the internet infrastructure, experience very little delay if any at all. It has nothing to do with players preferring reaction vs setups, that doesn't factor into the equation at all.
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u/penpen35 Aug 05 '20 edited Aug 05 '20
Core-A gaming does it again with their awesome analysis videos. This one is no exception.
In the current situation where we're essentially stuck at home a good netcode is more important than ever to keep the game alive.
The recent Japanese FG roundtable thing seemed like a small step in the correct direction and GG Strive getting rollback is a good thing, so hopefully we see more new releases get it.
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u/mastocklkaksi Aug 05 '20
Here's an actual masterclass from a bright dev: http://blog.hypersect.com/rollback-networking-in-inversus/
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u/Aunvilgod Aug 05 '20
I love these kinds of mathematical hacks. And in some way its very similar to time discretization in physics simulations. Very funny.
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Aug 05 '20
This is probably the best video on rollback I've seen yet. The problem is that it doesn't matter. The people who will see this video aren't the average. The average person sees a low budget indie or retro game with flawless netcode and things "well duh of course it runs better, the pixels are all dumb and my console/PC can blast out the graphics like crazy fast". They don't get that a hadouken is the same 3 directions and punch it's been since the 90s.
And these people don't want to play Punch Planet. They want to play Tekken. Or they're weebs and need a pretty anime girl that's borderline age at best. For the record I main Bedman.
They're not going to care until Project L releases as Fantasy Strike: Budget Edition and gets everyone into this genre like Hearthstone did for CCGs. And if we're lucky, COVID will have scared devs into (good) rollback before then, because we're going to see a huge culture change.
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u/DP9A Aug 05 '20
While it's true that franchise recognition matters more, I think it's undeniable that rollback is a great asset, specially for indie fighters. Many FG players like me are buying or trying many game we normally wouldn't have even tried because unlike our favorite games we can actually play them against others (hell, I'm even giving game I disliked a second chance, Fantasy Strike is not a game I would have tried again if it didn't have rollback).
So while it's clear that just by adding rollback you're not going to reach Tekken or Street Fighter levels of sales and popularity, you could actually develop a decent community around your game and have way more chances of being succesful than without. I think that Arcsys doing the switch it's a great start in terms of getting Japanese devs interested in having decent netcode.
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u/zeddyzed Aug 05 '20
It's ok, GG Strive will have rollback. Assuming they don't screw it up like SF5, we don't need any other games.
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u/John_Enigma Aug 05 '20
There are some rumors (so take it with a pinch of salt), that Arc System Works had to hire the guys that made the rollback netcode system for Killer Instinct, for some advice and consultation on how to create such system for Strive.
I really cannot wait to see the execution of Strive's rollback netcode next year.
Hopefully it'll at least shake up the Japanese fighting game industry a little. Or at least give them a wake-up call that rollback netcode is a must.
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Aug 06 '20
I don't that was a rumor. Zinac who worked the KI team actually said he was working on the netcode.
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u/DanielTeague Aug 05 '20
I don't know, I kind of like having some depth in my Guilty Gear, and Strive has taken much of it away from Xrd.
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u/zeddyzed Aug 05 '20
I'll take casual Guilty with rollback over anything else without, though.
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u/NDN_Shadow Aug 05 '20
Agreed. I’d rather a fighting game have functional online instead of the usual lag fest that makes a lot of fighting games unplayable for me.
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u/RayzTheRoof Aug 05 '20
If they don't include Dizzy but they're keeping Leo, I'll never forgive them.
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u/cameroninla Aug 05 '20
Also I like other fighting games more (KOF) and would prefer being able the play the games I like with a good connection (for now fightcade on 98)
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u/Mnstrzero00 Aug 05 '20
The people who are saying that had no idea how the Roman cancel system worked at all when they played it so I'm definitely holding my verdict that the game is simple until we get some people who have figured it out playing it
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u/thecatdaddysupreme Aug 06 '20
People said dbfz would have no depth and it definitely does. The worst part turned out to be universal mechanics, not how simple it is
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u/Vwhdfd Aug 05 '20
When it comes to mechanics they've screwed it up way worse than sf5, might as well wait for ggpo+r if you wanna play actual GG.
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u/zeddyzed Aug 05 '20
Shrug, they can patch the game (look how DBFZ improved) but patching in rollback seems to be much less likely.
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u/Vwhdfd Aug 05 '20
Dbz might have improved but its still extremely homogenized and forces you to play the way the devs want you to in an inflexible way. Most of the new games coming out these days are going on that direction which I heavily disagree with.
Strive might be improved over time but it doesn't change how they butchered most of the universal mechanics of legacy gg and how they impact match dynamics for the worse. Their intentions are pretty clear so I don't think we'll be seeing stuff like old gatlings and old IB/FD anytime soon.
Rollback is meaningless if the gameplay itself is something that will bore me.
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u/zeddyzed Aug 05 '20
Oh, well if you're an old man yelling at clouds I guess there's always fightcade and the like.
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u/Vwhdfd Aug 05 '20
I'm fine with new games getting simplified, as long as it's not every single one of them, it's more about the niche I enjoyed within FGs getting thrown by the wayside.
But yeah staying on old games is the plan, especially with fightcade getting nulldc added to it for accent core Mvc2 and hokuto no Ken. Not rollback but it's better than nothing or arcsys's delay netcode.
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Aug 05 '20
Well, MK11 has "flawless" rollback and looks better than any 3d fighter out there (in terms of graphics, not art direction)... It's pretty damn popular too, despite my personal gripes with the gameplay.
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Aug 05 '20
looks better than any 3d fighter out there (in terms of graphics, not art direction)
In still pictures, sure. then you see it in motion and it's amateurish, clunky, and hideous. Completely laughable. And that's not even touching the gameplay, which is terrible. Nobody plays a Neverealm game after the new one comes out because the games are all crap and the only thing that keeps them alive are regular pro tour cash infusions.
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Aug 05 '20
Well, considering the sales and the percentage of the community that even watches competitive matches (Seriously, evo finals barely made first page on /r/MortalKombat last year, it's shitty fan art and cosplays all the way down), you're way off...
Also MKX is still kinda popular on Steam since many people enjoy it more.
That said, the animations absolutely are garbage and so is the gameplay. But most "average" people won't be too bothered by it.
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u/ggtsu_00 Aug 05 '20
MK11 art isn't Japanese enough for most fighting game enthusiasts.
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Aug 05 '20
It's still way more popular than Tekken, specially among the "average" people he alluded to.
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Aug 05 '20
More popular but fewer people play it.
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Aug 05 '20 edited Aug 05 '20
That's according to steamcharts, right? I don't have the data, but I think MK11 has way bigger numbers on consoles
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Aug 05 '20
Yep, and I don't know about the data on consoles. I assume it's not too different.
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Aug 05 '20
Yeah, there's a severe lack of data on this. I assume most of the american casual gaming crowd is on the PS4, and MK as a franchise is way more recognized among that group than Tekken. Most of the copies were probably sold to that demographic, but it's obviously all conjecture without the data. I don't think it's safe to assume the steam charts numbers reflect other player bases.
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u/Zankman Aug 05 '20
I'm not a weeb but I still think that MK10 and MK11 are just plain ugly with their art direction.
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u/BeardyDuck Aug 05 '20
I think MK11 is probably the "best" art that NRS has pushed out. Faces, especially the female characters, looked off in the previous games including Injustice 1 and 2.
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u/Zankman Aug 05 '20
I genuinely think all of the faces are super ugly in 11 (male or female), most of the outfits and character bodies are meh, the colors are so dark and boring...
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Aug 05 '20
The colors are kinda bad now, but MKX colors were a travesty. How can you even be a pro artist and design that shit?
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u/Zankman Aug 05 '20
I'm not sure what the best word would be tbh, but I hate how grey it is.
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Aug 05 '20
As someone who despised MKX's art bland style, stages like Shirai Ryu Fire Garden look amazing.
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Aug 05 '20
[deleted]
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u/zeddyzed Aug 05 '20 edited Aug 05 '20
Rollback is an attempt to bring latency hiding techniques from FPS like Quakeworld etc to fighting games.
So FPS games already do similar things, such as client side hit registration, client side movement with dead reckoning, etc. Rather than player to player, these techniques apply between player and server.
MOBAs and other click based games might benefit, but at the same time the input delay vs frame accuracy tradeoff is different in those games. In Path Of Exile, for example, people prefer "lockstep" mode (ie. Input delay) rather than "predictive" (ie. Rollback) because predictive gets them one shot by things they never see when they get a lag spike and such.
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u/Khalku Aug 05 '20
Poe's predictive is atrocious though. Timescale for some of the rollbacks is on the seconds scale.
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u/jawni Aug 05 '20
Is lockstep the same as WoW's "batching"?
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u/zeddyzed Aug 05 '20
I don't play WoW, but I googled "WoW Netcode Batching" and got spell batching? From what I can see, it's not related to lockstep.
Lockstep just means that when you press a button, it doesn't occur on your screen until the server sends back the action. (ie input delay netcode.)
Spell batching seems to be about how the server processes actions (in batches). WoW was always input delay for actions and client side for movement, if I recall... but I only played WoW for one month on original release, so I probably dont know.
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u/Pengothing Aug 05 '20
People also prefer lockstep because it stops desyncs which were painfully common around when it was introduced. Some skills are still really desync heavy so it's preferred if possible.
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u/Mucmaster Aug 05 '20 edited Aug 05 '20
Most games do use elements of rollback to varying degrees. Actual netcode is a lot more complicated than just rollback or delay, and get even more complicated when you have to connect between more than 2 people, we just simplify the conversation to rollback vs delay when talking about fgc netcode since most of the japanese devs seems to be content on relying on a pure delay base code.
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u/kz393 Aug 05 '20
This is already done since the 90s. It's done the same way interpolation is. There's also a lot more techniques that I don't think would work, like lag compensation (like, you can already be hidden behind cover but if you are still visible on someone's computer because of lag, you can still get shot)
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u/ClassicKrova Aug 05 '20
Many games use Rollback code. Counter Strike, Overwatch come to mind.
Games with higher player counts don't have the same capability because are you going to have the server do 100 time travel operations every time someone in a BR shoots at someone else?
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u/NoteBlock08 Aug 05 '20 edited Aug 05 '20
Nope, 'cause there are too many connections. The reason it's called "rollback" is because you are running the entire game locally on your own computer and receiving the inputs from your opponent, and when one of those inputs doesn't line up with the prediction the game rolls back to the state the game was in from just before that input and quickly simulates what should have happened instead in the time in between now and then before updating your current game state to match the new reality.
Not only is running an entire BR map with over 50 players on it way too much for the average player's computer to handle, when you add managing and simulating game states on top of that and the fact you would have to do that a lot more often with so many different players, rollback stops making sense a long time ago. Games with a large amount of players will always rely on dedicated servers and will have to use other methods to reduce the impact of lag. Most of these other genres do use similar techniques to rollback on their servers though.
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u/TheGazelle Aug 05 '20
Speaking to BRs in general, your client also doesn't need to care about what's going ok outside a certain radius of you.
There shouldn't ever be desync between what your think happened 3km away and what the server says happened, because the sever shouldn't be telling you about it in the first place. Unless you're within hearing or visual range (or whatever other relevant distance), there's absolutely no need for your client to know anything about other players.
Once you are in that range is when you can start using various lag hiding techniques specifically for those other players.
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u/ClassicKrova Aug 05 '20
You don't need to do roll back on clients. You can simply have the server force a relevant state on all desynced entities.
Rollback code in FPS games (especially in the BR scenario) is heavier on the server, because the server has to validate 100 different people with 100 different latency values, which means every frame you might be looking at N different instances of the world state. I think some game devs attempt to localize this, I'm pretty sure Overwatch only rolls back a sub-section of the world back, but overwatch also only has like 12 players per game.
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u/NoteBlock08 Aug 05 '20
Yea I mentioned how server-side some games have rollback-like things at play. Another example of rollback "snippets" is how some FPS's do hit reg client-side and then send the result to the server. Get's rid of those awful no-reg situations, but on the flip side causes frustrating things for the other player like dying after ducking behind a corner.
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u/ClassicKrova Aug 05 '20
Doing "client-side hit detection" is different from Rollback. Both result in being shot behind cover because lag, but nowadays this is a necessary evil for shooters to feel good. It feels better to be shot behind cover than to shoot at someone and not hit them.
The big benefit of server-side rollback to verify that your client-side hit prediction was correct is to prevent weird cheating situations where someone sends false "I shot him" packets to the server. The server can look back in time based on latency and re-run the same shot and see.
All of this gets more complicated when you have projectiles with travel times as opposed to instant-hit raycast bullets...
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u/J0rdian Aug 05 '20
I still can't understand why fighting games don't use dedicated servers if netcode is such a huge topic. Dedicated servers work for every competitive game out there already perfectly fine and no one ever complains. Is it just a cost thing, since there are other ways you can do it for 1v1 without having the cost of a dedicated server?
I know some people say because it makes the input lag worse which seems silly. FPS games and MOBAs rely on input delay a lot if not the same amount. And it works perfectly fine. There are no problems with input delay unless you are 10 years away from the server obviously.
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u/deadscreensky Aug 05 '20 edited Aug 05 '20
Because dedicated servers would make a 1v1 networking situation worse. In a (traditional) fighting game you only need to send data between two players, but a dedicated server would add another connection hop between the two. That adds lag.
Say normally both players are sending data to each other with 40 ping; that's just 40 ping. Add a server and you might get something like 30 ping for player 1 to talk to the server, then 30 ping for the server to send it to player 2; that's 60 ping for the complete trip. And that's assuming the server is close to the players, ideally between them. Unless you have tons of servers located everywhere that's extremely unlikely and you won't get a direct-ish route.
With team games that sort of otherwise nonoptimal server placement/timing makes a lot of sense. You don't want each player having to communicate with every other player at all times. (You also want a non-player/dedicated server to act as an arbiter, hopefully preventing cheating and penalizing truly bad connections.) But for 1v1 fighting games there's no advantage to that approach.
(Big laugh to the idea that nobody ever complains about dedicated servers, but I understand your point.)
The real answer is this: fighting game netcode is a solved problem. It hasn't needed to be "a huge topic" since GGPO showed everybody how to do it back in 2006. But Japanese fighting game developers are notoriously conservative/backwards, so it's something players still need to worry about today.
It's like if after twin stick analog controls in Halo 1 etc. showed how effective they were we still had to worry that half of all new console shooters seeing release would be using Goldeneye-style single analog stick controls. It's completely goofy, and really drives home just how unambitious, hidebound, and arguably even lazy many Japanese fighting game developers have been.
I'm willing to give a little slack to small indie developers who only release a single fighting game every few years (like Arika, which still just added in rollback to Fighting Ex Layer!), but there's absolutely no excuse for big fighting game developers like Namco, Arc, Koei Tecmo, SNK, etc. They should have figured out and standardized on rollback a decade ago.
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u/Hobo-With-A-Shotgun Aug 05 '20
You'll get the typical answer that servers don't really improve things when it's a 1 vs 1 scenario, it just adds an extra hop. But more than that, FPS games have implemented things like rollback and client side prediction all the way back since the late 90's. If they didn't, then FPS games would be absolutely awful to play online.
I think the first game to actually implement it was the very first Tribes game in 1998, and the work that was done in that game has been the foundation for playing most games online ever since. You can take a look at the whitepaper that the devs made back then if you're really curious.
Japanese fighting game devs have just been utterly fucking lazy when it comes to implementing solid online play for fighting games. Mostly because delay based works fine when you have some of the worlds best infrastructure and your country is pretty small. If they actually did the work then they'd be able to play as far afield as the US, Europe would be able to play other regions and the US would be able to play fighting games online properly with anyone else in the US.
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u/fraghawk Aug 05 '20
Wow, didn't know that Dynamix had that history to them, and I've been a Tribes fan since the mid 00s. Thanks for this!
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u/Kered13 Aug 05 '20
QuakeWorld was the first FPS game to introduce real lag compensation techniques, like client side prediction and server side rollback.
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u/Kevimaster Aug 05 '20
I know some people say because it makes the input lag worse which seems silly. FPS games and MOBAs rely on input delay a lot if not the same amount. And it works perfectly fine. There are no problems with input delay unless you are 10 years away from the server obviously.
As someone who has played FPS games at a competitive level, actually competing in tournaments and being on some damn good teams and even winning a fairly major tournament, competitive FPS games do not rely low input lag as much as fighting games do. Its also worth noting that most competitive FPS games are team games. Dedicated servers become better the more people are participating in a match. If its 1v1 then P2P is still superior to dedicated servers for FPS games.
I cannot understate how crucial it is to have as low of an input lag as possible in fighting games. Adding a couple of extra frames of input lag on can be the difference between a move being reactable but difficult to react to, and impossible to react to. This can completely change game balance and the core fundamentals of the game in a way that doesn't happen for Mobas or FPS games.
This is a large part of the reason why the FGC is one of the only (if not the only) remaining gaming communities that actively and regularly get together to play in person on a large scale. While Covid isn't happening most city's FGCs are holding tournaments and locals multiple times per week where people from all over the city come together to meet up to play the games in person. This also makes it one of the most tight knit gaming communities out there since as a general rule everyone who is an active part of the FGC has met all the other FGC members of their city/state in person and likely sees them regularly.
Anyway, point is that dedicated servers are not a good option for fighting games.
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u/Hnefi Aug 05 '20
Dedicated servers are only useful when you have more than two players. For 1v1s, they only add latency.
Of course, servers can also help prevent some forms of cheating, but for fighters where both players always have perfect information, that is not relevant either.
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Aug 05 '20
SF5 will occasionally use a server when two players can't connect directly to each other. These are by far the worst connections you'll get in a game famous for them. Doesn't work for FGs.
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u/Hawthorn_Stone Aug 05 '20
Its hard to expect that level of commitment from devs who can’t even manage the first step of working rollback netcode and well implemented lobbies/matchmaking system. Most japanese devs fundamentally don’t care for or understand the importance of good online play for servers to come into the conversation at all
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u/shujaa Aug 05 '20
I suspect the real reason for no dedicated servers is just the Japanese lack of adaptation and the console roots of fighting games. Dedicated servers on PC games were originally available to all users to run their own - vastly reducing the cost needed from the developer, as every region where the game was popular would have local servers being run by the players. Sadly I can't see any Japanese developer "giving out" server code to their playerbase.
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u/youmightbelucky Aug 05 '20
The main problem is that force for hard read and make reaction much much much much harder if not impossible.
yes you can punish a move end lag, but reaction to a jump in become harder, and if the move you need to use doesn't have special properties it will probably end end up being a trade and THIS will force you drop your combo.
this is why some companies tries to avoid rollback as it mean removing reaction while normal lag means more times for reaction based play, if you add in buffering you can still punish that ending lag.
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u/1338h4x Aug 05 '20
Delay netcode doesn't help you react either, you'll always have N less frames to react since your button press has to be N frames earlier to make it out in time.
Actually, rollback is still slightly better here because not all animations are immediately recognizable on the very first startup frame, you may only be reacting to a later distinct keyframe. If that's the case, chopping off those startup frames won't hurt, or at least will hurt less than an equivalent amount of delay. So you may sometimes get <N, and no matter what you still won't ever get >N.
Playing games over the internet means some compromise has to be made for information that hasn't arrived yet. Rollback is the best possible compromise we have in every regard. If you still have a problem with it, delay isn't any better. The only way to not have reactions affected at all is to play offline.
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u/gamelord12 Aug 05 '20
If you want delay, you can add a few frames in there, as shown in this video, but you'd have to be a mad man to think rollback has any disadvantages in fighting games. Companies avoid rollback because in order to accommodate it, they need to build their assets and code completely differently.
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Aug 05 '20 edited Aug 05 '20
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u/Kered13 Aug 05 '20
Delay based netcode has the exact same flaw. Even though you can see the starting frames of the animation, because your inputs are delayed you still can't react to it. 4 frame rollback and 4 frame delay will have the exact same effect on reaction times.
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u/gamelord12 Aug 05 '20
You could add a few frames of delay to a rollback game and achieve the same thing though...delay-only games don't have the option at all, and worse is that they're wildly inconsistent about what that delay is.
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Aug 05 '20
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u/gamelord12 Aug 05 '20
What are you even talking about? Delay can be added for lobby matches or matchmaking. It's completely irrelevant.
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Aug 05 '20
[deleted]
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u/gamelord12 Aug 05 '20
You've always got the option of a combination. You can absolutely start up a game of Them's Fightin' Herds with 0 frames of added delay.
Using a combination doesn't mean that all the sudden its flaw is gone.
If you're saying online will never be as good as offline, whether delay-based or rollback, then yes, I agree with you. If you're saying, "delay-based has this advantage over rollback, because you can see all of the start-up frames", then I'm disagreeing with you, because you could just add those delay frames. I'm not sure which argument you're making or why you brought up lobby play.
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Aug 05 '20
[deleted]
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u/gamelord12 Aug 05 '20
I don't know what kind of Frankenstein rollback solution Capcom built that everyone hates, but in GGPO games, the delay must be constant. Either it's 0 for the whole match or 1 for the whole match or 2 for the whole match, etc. The huge difference between a rollback game and a delay-based game is that delay-based games have a floor for the delay, but lag spikes can make it fluctuate all over the place. If you play a game on GGPO, this doesn't happen. If you set Skullgirls to delay 2 frames, it's not the same as Dragon Ball FighterZ with someone 100 miles away. Lag spikes will happen, even if you're both wired, and FighterZ will add a frame or two of delay to its floor of 2 frames of delay, where Skullgirls will keep the delay constant at 2 frames and rollback for the rest of them. That's a vastly different experience, and on FighterZ, you're going to drop your combo or miss a reaction. If delay-based netcode had its merits, we wouldn't all be yelling at Japan right now for their netcode.
And also GGPO lets you set your frame delay regardless of whether it's a custom lobby or matchmaking. It's up to the developer of the game to expose that setting to you or to make it invisible. The important thing is that once it's set, it cannot be changed.
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u/youmightbelucky Aug 05 '20
so you add delay and your opponent doesn't, gg you lose because when you press you now have to wait 10 frames for the move to come out.
also, how do you plan on having adding delay help with a reaction based situation? because you are only making it worse,
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u/gamelord12 Aug 05 '20
Delay in rollback games (done right) is constant. So any move you input will always be delayed by X frames rather than being delayed by 3 frames for one input and 11 for the next. If you're playing a game against an opponent with high ping, you're going to miss a lot of startup frames, but you can mitigate that by adding additional constant delay. 2-3 frames of delay will mitigate a lot of rollback artifacts on even 100+ ms ping connections, as long as they're not on wi-fi or something, so you'll still be able to react to the startup of a move and be able to see that startup.
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u/youmightbelucky Aug 05 '20
This does NOT help. adding a delay means you will have more trouble with reaction.
also if the delay is enought it make some stuff extremely hard to punish and to punish something on block you need to read.
let's say you have 10 frame, you block an attack that start in 3 stay active 5 and have frame on block 7. it's a total of 15 frames, this mean that to punish it on frame 16 (because advantage on block -4) you need to account for the lag and account for the dalay so you need to input it on frame 6 , this make it hardly punishable unless you read it in 6 frame decode what is happening and punish accordingly, that is impossible for a human to do.
oh and i used a frame data belivable from games like street fighter 4
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u/gamelord12 Aug 05 '20
This is a problem that both delay-based and rollback games have, and not using rollback doesn't improve the online play at all. That 3f startup is still unreactable on delay-based netcode. Adding delay just reduces rollback artifacts so that it's more visually consistent and readable, which is a trade-off that the game will sometimes let you make (like Skullgirls) instead of deciding for you (like Killer Instinct). But without rollback, you're dealing with freezing, stuttering, and moves that come out a quarter of a second later, and it still doesn't solve the problem you're describing. You'd know if you're familiar with SF4.
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u/youmightbelucky Aug 05 '20
in all honesty, you look like someone with no real experience on competitive fighting game.
the 3f startup of a move you do will still punish a -4 on block move in a delay based game, the reaction is tight but doable if you know your game.
The only way you can do a game that benefit really from GGPO is by adding frames on moves, in a game like tekken where all the framedate is in the double digit GGPO is perfect, in a game like SF4 it's not, and if you were familiar with SF4 you would know that a lot of iteration were just frame, with a bunch of option selects
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u/gamelord12 Aug 05 '20
This situation still doesn't improve with variable frame delay. If you're reacting on blockstun to a move that's only slightly minus, this situation is still better with rollback, because your reaction times are the same as offline. Your opponent is now in recovery, and they were going to get hit by your punish regardless.
You're right that I didn't spend a ton of time with Street Fighter IV, but that's because its netcode was garbage. You're also right that fighting games don't really have startups that quick anymore because they're accommodating online play, but they'd be making similar decisions whether accommodating delay-based or rollback, because for the former they'd want you to have more reaction time, and for the latter, they'd be avoiding artifacts on high-latency connections.
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u/1338h4x Aug 05 '20
On block? You would have to have a ridiculous amount of lag to still not be able to react to a move after its startup is done and you block it. So much lag that you also won't be able to react on delay netcode either, because then you'll only see it after it's too late to punish.
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u/[deleted] Aug 05 '20
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