Unlagged - Yes or No

[Lava Croft]

Yes, everybody has an opinion about Unlagged, go and express it!

[/dev/humancontroller]

If Tremulous 1.1.0 is Tremulous, then Tremulous 1.2.0 is not Tremulous. So so much has changed. And they are complaining about it, just as about unlagged. Once they will be part of the game (actually, unlagged already mostly is), everyone will have other, then-current things to bitch about. Why not complain about Tremulous 1.1.0 because you are used to 1.0.2?

[SlackerLinux]

personally i think unlagged has major issues and shifts balance more to humans just like everyone else its just an opinion and i hate various side effects (mainly dieing when your clearly past that corner) it might be good for q3 but for a melee class (aliens) and a range class (humans) humans clearly have the advantage. i also think it hinders players ability to effectively dodge.

anyway their my views on unlagged

[temple]

Unlagged is good.  It seperates the men from the boys.  It makes the rifle better and it makes a basic human is equal to a dretch. 

I think people have to play with Unlagged long enough to realize that aliens (especially dretches) will get killed more initially.  But after a few games, the good players will adjust and it will be business as usual.  Also, its improves alien accuracy as well. 

As for the unfair kills (i.e. you were behind a wall but got shot anyways), that the price you pay for more accuracy.  But its not as common as people think.  It happens in other games with some form of Unlagged and other players accept it.

[David]

And it happens without unlagged too, just people don't seem to bitch as much then.

[Lava Croft]

And it happens without unlagged too, just people don't seem to bitch as much then.

It does not happen nearly as much, and if it happens, you do not travel as far around the corner before dying as you would with Unlagged.

Unlagged is good.  It seperates the men from the boys.

How Unlagged separates the men from the boys is beyond me, since I think men do not need help when aiming.

Continuing on this core element of any Quake game, don't you mind that Unlagged is basically an 'aiming assistant'?

[Bomb]

Unlagged creates some degree of balance between those with low pings and those with high pings. Therefore, it is a solution.

[David]

Continuing on this core element of any Quake game, don't you mind that Unlagged is basically an 'aiming assistant'?

Its an 'aiming assistant' about as much as any other core part of the engine is.  Lets remove the renderer, its helping you play better!

Its not giving an advantage, its taking away a disadvantage.

[Lava Croft]

What Unlagged does is touch a vital part of the Quake gameplay, in favor of those incapable or unwilling to learn/adapt to aiming with latency.

It might be a solution, but it is a solution that takes away control from the player in favor of those less capable. This also happens to software like operating systems, only in the latter case, people tend to think it's a bad thing.

[EDIT]

Lets remove the renderer, its helping you play better!

What about an addition to the renderer that lets you see through walls with a certain radius?
In other words, you could at least try not to sound silly.

[Undeference]

In order for something to be a solution, there must be a problem it solves. Latency "correction" is a workaround for an unfortunate bug in the universe that prevents instantaneous communication (we call it "physics", a synonym for "unintended features"). A side effect of much of the universe being made up by really ugly, undocumented perl hacks is that it is totally unmaintainable and nobody can quite figure out why things appear to work.

There's a quote that goes something along the lines of, it's not the answer, but it raises some interesting questions.

[Lava Croft]

A lot of people do not see latency as a problem at all, and those people make up a part of this community, as do the people who think latency is a problem. Only fact is, that the first group is ignored, while all development is being focused on the second. This development is what worries me, since it touches the core of Quake.

I think 'degeneration' is a good word for this development. 'Dumbing down' is also a popular term, and a somewhat more friendly one at that.

[temple]

Like I've said many a time...
Can anyone outrun a bullet?  Because all Unlagged does is make near instant projectiles actually hit instantly.  If instant weapons do not function like this, then the netcode is broken.


Yes, you have done well with the netcode up until now.  Yes, you many not have any problems.  But if the game doesn't represent what it is intended, its needs to be fixed.  If Unlagged fixes that, than anyone that is oppossed to it is a FPS Luddite.

[Eeeew Spiders]

In order for something to be a solution, there must be a problem it solves. Latency "correction" is a workaround for an unfortunate bug in the universe that prevents instantaneous communication (we call it "physics", a synonym for "unintended features"). A side effect of much of the universe being made up by really ugly, undocumented perl hacks is that it is totally unmaintainable and nobody can quite figure out why things appear to work.

There's a quote that goes something along the lines of, it's not the answer, but it raises some interesting questions.

hehe, good one.

Unlagged changes the game. Both may be called tremulous, but there is a difference in how the game will be played.
Unlagged is not a god given super solution to answer the problem of latency, it just handles packages differently.
It comes with side effects, which favors one type of play, and gives disadvantage to another type of playing.

A fairly good description is given here, a link provided by the same temple in one of the other 100 threads about unlagged:
unlagged_faq
There the author says

Wait – so is there more I should be worried about?
That depends on whether or not you're the kind of player that actually does something about impending hitscan attacks...

For those players that have a tactical way of moving around, they have to readjust such, that the resulting game type is not why they play tremulous.
The quoted unlagged developer does claim that there will be fairness issues with high lag when trying to compensate for high lag using Unlagged.

[David]

Lets remove the renderer, its helping you play better!

What about an addition to the renderer that lets you see through walls with a certain radius?
In other words, you could at least try not to sound silly.

Walls and there blocking of sight is a carefully designed in game-play element.
Lag is something that a great deal of effort was taken to remove.

We now have the tech to make it better.  Refusing is like saying we shouldn't upgrade the graphics as some old people like the current stuff.

What we have now is broken.  Unlagged moves it closer to to the intended target.

[Eeeew Spiders]

But if the game doesn't represent what it is intended, its needs to be fixed

What we have now is broken.  Unlagged moves it closer to to the intended target.

Who decides how it is intended? And Unlagged doesn't fix latency. It does not remove latency from the game, it shifts the latency around (from the high ping shooter to the target).
Explanation:
Without unlagged a player only has to compensate for his/her own lag.
With unlagged a player has to compensate for the lag of the attacker. When to get out of reach of a player, who is about to commence with a hitscan attack, is not visible from the screen, since
you cannot know when, in the attackers own time, he started to move towards you.
With unlagged the game is not WYSIWYG, its not what you see. Its what the other high ping client saw. So much about the intend of the game and how to fix it

There is no right or wrong in my opinion about Unlagged, but there is a preference.

I personally hope that developers keep in mind with their balance tweaks, that there will, especially in europe, be many servers that will continue to run tremulous without unlagged when Trem 1.2 comes out.

And to quote n00b pl0x

cl_maxping 50

Thats the best solution to latency you can get, will push the game more into the direction it was intended than unlagged ever will

edit: fixed typos

[temple]

Who decides how it is intended?

Can you outrun a bullet?

[Eeeew Spiders]

Who decides how it is intended?

Can you outrun a bullet?

Can you shoot me when I see you aiming in a total different direction?
Can you shoot around corners?

See, there is a whole lot of new questions arising, and the truth is, it's just a matter of perspective.

There's a quote that goes something along the lines of, it's not the answer, but it raises some interesting questions.

Unlagged is good.  It seperates the men from the boys.  It makes the rifle better and it makes a basic human is equal to a dretch. 

Better take a lucy then, if the rifle is to hard to handle :-D

[temple]

Who decides how it is intended?

Can you outrun a bullet?

Can you shoot me when I see you aiming in a total different direction?
Can you shoot around corners?

Unlagged doesn't allow a player to do either of those things.  Those things are the byproduct of the weapons working as intended when people with different pings fight.

Which is a lot better than weapons not hitting targets when they are aiming at them.

[kevlarman]

Who decides how it is intended?

Can you outrun a bullet?

Can you shoot me when I see you aiming in a total different direction?
Can you shoot around corners?

what you see is by definition inaccurate, unlagged changes nothing in that respect.

[temple]

I can summerize my arguments simply by saying I currently play on 2 servers where one has regular hit detection and the other with Unlagged.  I'm still a good player on either but Unlagged just makes the game MORE balanced.  Rifles actually kill stuff and aliens get hits when they should.  Without Unlagged the game feels very ping biased.  These worst case scenarios are so rare, its not worth mentioning.

[Rocinante]

I see people complain about being shot while their shooter isn't even aiming at them in unlagged games.  However, think of it this way.  Given a weapon that fires instantly and whose projectile or effect travels faster than light, would it not stand to reason that you would feel the effect of the weapon before you ever saw or heard it being fired?  This is the same reason you see fireworks before you hear them, the light travels faster than the sound.  You see the bright flash and know to expect the boom.  Well, if you get killed, know to expect that the attacker will turn and fire at you, because from his perspective he already has.

Everything is relative in life; someone traveling close to the speed of light will appear to be zipping around at an inhuman speed to you, while you will appear to be at a standstill to him.  Neither of you are wrong, it's all based on your perspective.  In the case of unlagged play, neither side is wrong in what they saw happen; the attacker saw the target cross their field of view, turned, fired and killed him.  The target saw that they moved somewhere, and through persistence of vision (or in this case, lag due to their ping being too different from the attacker) their brain (the server) filled in that some things happened when they really didn't, because they were already shot and killed.

Does it suck?  I never liked unlagged when I started playing, because I played with a relatively low ping all the time.  I then saw how things changed when I was no longer using that low ping and had to connect elsewhere.  I played some games with unlagged turned on, and realized that while some times it annoyed me, other times it helped me - it leveled the playing field for all.

In my personal opinion, if you don't want unlagged turned on, then don't turn it on.  But don't expect anyone who isn't on the same network to have a fun time playing there.  If Tremulous didn't have unlagged as an option, I'm sure people would work around it - leading shots, etc.  However there might be just as many who wouldn't play, or wouldn't play on as many servers as they do, because it's not fun to have to correct for a variable problem like network latency across the Internet when you're trying to have fun.

[Eeeew Spiders]

what you see is by definition inaccurate, unlagged changes nothing in that respect.

It changes what a player has to compensate for, his or the other players ping.

Neither of you are wrong, it's all based on your perspective.  In the case of unlagged play, neither side is wrong in what they saw happen;

Well put Rocinante, someone that understands unlagged. It's what I have been trying to say, its a matter of perspective and preference.
My only concern being that the game is being balanced towards unlagged play, where before it was balanced without unlagged.
The option itself is a simple setting in the server configuration, that is not the problem. And I see it is hard to make it right for both game types, just asking to keep both playstyles in mind when balancing.
Unlagged is not what temple is trying to make believe the truth in all perspectives, the none-sideeffect-cure to internet latency and the answer to time travel.

[kevlarman]

what you see is by definition inaccurate, unlagged changes nothing in that respect.

It changes what a player has to compensate for, his or the other players ping.

Neither of you are wrong, it's all based on your perspective.  In the case of unlagged play, neither side is wrong in what they saw happen;

Well put Rocinante, someone that understands unlagged. It's what I have been trying to say, its a matter of perspective and preference.
My only concern being that the game is being balanced towards unlagged play, where before it was balanced without unlagged.
The option itself is a simple setting in the server configuration, that is not the problem. And I see it is hard to make it right for both game types, just asking to keep both playstyles in mind when balancing.
Unlagged is not what temple is trying to make believe the truth in all perspectives, the none-sideeffect-cure to internet latency and the answer to time travel.

if a balanced game becomes unbalanced when all players are lpb's (like on a lan) there are bigger issues than whether you like lag correction on your server or not.

[St. Anger]

If unlagged assists aim so much, why couldn't you hit my mara? I consistently had 150+ hp after fighting your human!

You can talk, but if you can't support your statements in game, you ultimately fail.

[AppleJuice]

I'm not going to become involved in this endless debate, but I'd like to address something I repeatedly see mentioned: being shot around corners.  Wtf? That almost never happens...maybe once every 50 games, against someone with 250-300 ping.  Not often enough to complain about.

And yes, I play unlagged more than enough to know.  You guys are exaggerating the "problems" of unlagged way too much.

[Bissig]

You can get used to high ping by leading shots etc.. but you can not prepare or avoid getting killed behind the wall you just dodged to. There is no "compensation" for that, unless you say camping fixes this problem. Also, high ping often gives you some sort of little advantage in dodging. Of course it all depends on the ping overall, how big the difference in ping is and how the server handles the load. Oh, and if you can kill a dretch with a md just by hitting the air left or right of it without actually hitting its center, that is lame. (Before you start bitching: I was playing the md)

The only alien class that seems to gain from unlagged is the goon -> human dodging problem with unlagged

[Lava Croft]

If unlagged assists aim so much, why couldn't you hit my mara? I consistently had 150+ hp after fighting your human!

Because you fail to understand that because I do not play with Unlagged outside of MGdev, I adjust my aim to my ping, as I have done since I first started playing Quake on-line. I ping a good 150 to MGdev, so I lead my shots accordingly.

Sigh...

@Bissig: You quite hit the mark there. Whereas in the normal situation, one would only have to adjust his aiming to his own, hopefully consistent ping, with Unlagged, you have to look at the ping(s) of your opponent(s) and try to adjust your movement on that. I think the first is a lot easier to accomplish with a bit of training, whereas with the latter, it's outside of your control, and the only thing you can do is get annoyed.

[David]

Oh, and if you can kill a dretch with a md just by hitting the air left or right of it without actually hitting its center, that is lame.

That's a hit-box issue that's always been there and has no relation to unlagged.  In 1.2 the model and hit-box are roughly the same size.
Stop inventing problems, it doesn't make us inclined to believe anything else you say.

[AppleJuice]

I do not play with Unlagged outside of MGdev

Why do you bother commenting on something you obviously know very little about, then?

[Lava Croft]

I do not play with Unlagged outside of MGdev

Why do you bother commenting on something you obviously know very little about, then?

Ever heard of a game called Quake III Arena? One time, someone made a mod for it, called Unlagged. Yes, really!