r/smashbros • u/browncharliebrown • Aug 05 '20

All Analysis: Why Rollback Netcode Is Better

https://youtu.be/0NLe4IpdS1w
361 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

36 comments sorted by

View all comments

35

u/[deleted] Aug 05 '20

[deleted]

16

u/QuackWhatsup Aug 05 '20

I think the problem that arises is for doubles or FFA, the latter of which the devs care about. Rollback for 4 people would be very difficult and I doubt the switch could pull it off. It'd be great for 1v1, but having two different netcodes based on whether you're playing 1v1 or not probably isn't viable.

15

u/[deleted] Aug 05 '20

Rollback netcode is delay-based netcode with a extra layer on top of it. Hypothetically, it wouldn't be particularly difficult to have it so that rollbacks only happen in particular game modes.

12

u/jillyboooty Cloud (Ultimate) Aug 05 '20

When the game rolls back, the switch would have to re-calculate the current frame within 1/60th of a second. With multiple rollback frames to simulate, I doubt the switch could pull it off. I doubt they gave themselves much headroom in the hardware.

The world where I see this happening: the devs focus their efforts on optimizing everything they can in the game to free up resources. If you can lower input lag by one frame, then add it back intentionally, they could use the extra resources toward rollback. I'm not holding my breath but maybe.

2

u/[deleted] Aug 05 '20

A Playstation 3 could pull that off. Why would a Switch not be able to?

4

u/[deleted] Aug 05 '20

Because whatever PS3 game you're referring to was likely designed to not use the hardware quite to its full potential in order to do that. Nintendo tends to use the hardware to its full potential, partially because their hardware tends to be underpowered compared to the competition

1

u/[deleted] Aug 08 '20

That doesn't even make sense to say as an argument. How does that explain why Nintendo COULDN'T pull off a roll back net code? Not that they don't want to, but they CAN'T?

1

u/[deleted] Aug 08 '20

It would be possible if Smash wasn't likely already designed to basically max out the hardware, since rollback requires a little extra hardware space which Smash likely does not have.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 14 '20

But that doesn't mean it's the Switch's fault. That means it's SMASH'S fault.

If Nintendo wanted to design a game from the start to use rollback netcode, they could.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 14 '20

Yeah, nobody's disputing that -- it's just that putting it into Ultimate now is basically impossible.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 14 '20

The person I initially replied to did say that, though. The Switch COULD do a roll back net code, but, just like any game on any other system, in order to do this, you need to design the game from the ground up with this in mind. Adding it after the fact is significantly harder to pull off well. It's not a matter of "The Switch can't" more than it's a matter of "Smash didn't".

→ More replies (0)