This is how you kill your FPS

Surprise, a non-MWO post! I don't know how many of you played Battlefield 4 yet, but I just wanted to show you how and why such a trainwreck this game is, even after 4 months after release.

Your game may have the best graphics on the market, supporting 64 players while having dozens of weapons and vehicles on the map, all at the same time with awesome interaction with the environment(destruction) but, if your game doesn't have a functioning and decent netcode it really doesn't mean anything. As a fan of Battlefield series since 1942, when I bought BF4 it was the first thing I noticed. There was something "off" with the infantry combat, it felt as if I had no control over the firefights and everything happened randomly. You would see a guy fill his face with bullets and he would just turn around and one shot you. You would take damage long after you turned a corner and die to impossible shots. It was terrible.

As it turns out, Battlefield 4 servers operate on 10 tickrate. That means the server does its calculations only 10 times a second, or every 100ms. So if someone with 50ms ping shoots at you and your ping is 40ms, it would mean the first bullets can arrive as late as 190ms. Considering a typical weapon in BF4 kills in 200ms, you could actually be dead before the server tells you that you're being shot at. 

Intrigued by how it works? Just watch this excellent video, you will understand how tickrate-FPS-ping relation affects the game:




How does this affect us in MWO? Between all the HSR and hit detection bugs, you will notice that what actually happens in your client is different by what the server tells you. Sometimes an AC20 hits you, but you take no damage. Sometimes a poptart seems to miss you but your mech health display will flash with damage.

Luckily, MWO is a relatively slow paced game. So much that even the pings are outrageous in this game(usually >100, up to players with 300), it doesn't make a huge difference since time to kill is usually measured in tens of seconds. HSR usually does a good job compensating for the ping, also the default tickrate seems to be higher(30 perhaps?).
Share on Google Plus

About Rak

I'm an engineer who likes to write extremely long articles about games that border simulation and mainstream.
    Blogger Comment

0 comments:

Post a Comment