Messages

51

Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: The MB:AA:CC:PC thread: at least the netplay will be good

« on: August 29, 2011, 08:59:01 AM »

Sorry, I'm not really sure I understand what you are saying here.  Are you saying, if I set an input delay of 5, and press a button, the game wont actually try to send the packet until 5 frames later??  That seems kinda bad?


If the scenario I posted above was correct (apart from some minor maths fail ), then doesnt it mean that a person who sets his input delay to 0, will get instant response on his own screen, and cause maximum skipping and rollbacks on his opponent's screen?   Doesnt it mean that setting zero delay gives you an advantage over your more considerate opponent?

No, this is wrong. It's about the synchronization between the two systems. Take the following example.

• There is a buffer value of 5 frames set for the match, to indicate an upper bound on the latency between the players. This is used to synchronize the games and prevent them from becoming too far apart, eg through packet loss or one computer slowing down.
• Current frame is represented here by the value N.
• The synchronization frame is N+Buffer-Input_Delay. This is because literally the only reason you would add input delay is to reduce the amount of visible rollbacks.
  
• Player A has input delay 0 set. When he presses a button, it sends data for the frame N+0. Player A synchronizes for time N+Buffer-Input_Delay = N + 5, and will not proceed until this data is received. Player A will see 5 frames of rollbacks from Player B.
• Player B has input delay 5 set. When he presses a button, it sends data for the frame N+5. Player B synchronizes for time N+Buffer-Input_Delay = N + 0, and will not proceed until this data is received. Player B will see no rollbacks from player A.
• Player A and Player B are thus waiting on different frames(N+5 vs N+0), and sending data for different frames(N+0 vs N+5), causing a net change of zero.
• Both players will be showing the opponent's data as soon as it is received, it's simply a matter of trading off input delay vs rolling back.
• In the event that both players are sending data for N+0, they will still synchronize at N+5, causing both players to run the game 'ahead' by 5 frames. You can't erase latency.

This is the implementation as in RollCaster. Newer versions of GGPO have a separate synchronization clock which is far more lenient, sometimes allowing up to half a second of data loss without any frame drops, but this has its own drawbacks.

RollCaster has few special rules for handling packet loss, allowing one frame of drop before holding the game up, is handled as follows:

• There is a GracePeriod value that is initialized to zero.
• If the data for the next synchronization frame is not received and the GracePeriod value is zero, flag GracePeriod and run the game one frame anyway.
• If GracePeriod is non-zero and not all data for frames up to the synchronization frame are received, block and wait.
• If the data for all frames up to now are received, reset GracePeriod to zero.

AFAIK there's a bug which causes issues with spectators in this, but I don't know where it came from.

52

Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: The MB:AA:CC:PC thread: at least the netplay will be good

« on: August 28, 2011, 07:02:47 PM »

I don't care in the slightest if this thread gets clogged up. This is probably keeping people from posting stupid shit really.

And, yeah, that's more or less right, except in your two input delay example I think you meant 'skip the first 2 frames', not 3.

It's a tradeoff that hides stuff in favor of letting your buttons pop up smoother.

Oh. I should clarify, though, that if you push the base input delay up, you're essentially stating that you don't need input until that frame, so it's likely that the game will synchronize on _that_ frame, which means you will get less rollback from the opponent since they'll still be syncing to the original frame value.

53

Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: The MB:AA:CC:PC thread: at least the netplay will be good

« on: August 28, 2011, 06:46:56 PM »

I don't care in the slightest if this thread gets clogged up. This is probably keeping people from posting stupid shit really.

And, yeah, that's more or less right, except in your two input delay example I think you meant 'skip the first 2 frames', not 3.

It's a tradeoff that hides stuff in favor of letting your buttons pop up smoother.

54

Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: The MB:AA:CC:PC thread: at least the netplay will be good

« on: August 28, 2011, 05:40:58 PM »

Cool, thanks.


Oh, just one more question.  So, in GGPO (and presumably 3rd Strike OE), you'll get most people blindly setting 0, 1 or 2 for their input delay, even if their ping is above 33ms.  Does that mean, in a match, almost every attack/input from the other player skips the first few frames?

The delay/buffer value is considered to be a synchronization value more than anything else. You rollback the instant you receive _ANYTHING,_ so the setting is irrelevant.

The input delay setting applies for your local game, not for the opponent's view. They don't even have to match on the other side: It's a slider where you control the amount of input delay to reduce the amount of rollbacks that you, and you alone, see.

55

Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: The MB:AA:CC:PC thread: at least the netplay will be good

« on: August 28, 2011, 05:31:33 PM »

I suppose if one was writing a game from scratch, it might be smarter for the netcode to be aware of animations, so rather than, "He activated his 10 frame jab 5 frames ago, so instantly jump to frame 5 now", it would instead play all/some of the frames of that jab in the remaining 5 frames, at a higher speed to fit it in.  Gameplay stuff like hitboxes will remain at the original speed, so its purely a visual hack.

If your logic is sufficiently detached from your rendering, you shouldn't have any problems just sliding the timeline of the visuals along without any real cost or loss in accuracy.

56

Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: WakeupSRK podcast:"Being only on PC does not prevent MBAACC from being @EVO2012"

« on: August 28, 2011, 11:21:08 AM »

Neither ArcSys nor Aksys sponsored Evolution 2011.

Huh. I thought they did. Got me then.

57

Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: WakeupSRK podcast:"Being only on PC does not prevent MBAACC from being @EVO2012"

« on: August 28, 2011, 10:28:54 AM »

Yeah, MrWiz's response when he found out MBAA was not just an import but a PS2 game was classic.

Blazblue is honestly the black sheep of the tournament but it has sponsorship and a decent enough following.

58

Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: The MB:AA:CC:PC thread: at least the netplay will be good

« on: August 28, 2011, 10:27:12 AM »

Apologies for the slight off topic.

Mauve, as a games programmer myself (although mostly a peon gameplay/scripter rather than wizard/tech guy), I've always been interested in how rollback netcode actually works.  I have a rough idea of it, but I'm unclear on the precise details.

Could you please point me to any links, articles, or code that explains the principle behind rollback netcode?  My understanding breaks down at the level of a frame-by-frame step through... I'm like, ok, PC1 at frame 2503 recieves a packet and detects a desync... what now?!?

If there are any resources on the net that you could show me, I'd much appreciate it.  Google has failed me so far, I'm sorry.
(alternatively I'm happy to pester you with specific questions but I imagine that would be more annoying for you.)

You keep save states of the start of each frame and make sure you can step the game forwards without needing to render to the screen. When you receive data from 'x' frames ago, you rewind to that frame and rerun everything from that frame up until now. Aside from the save states, you need to track sound too. Basically sounds that have already started need to remain playing if they have not been retconned out, and stopped if they were. This is a bit of extra accounting information but doable. Only other real problems are from solving synchronization issues.

How you do the state information is up to you. You can either retain full information for each frame and copy everything over, or keep reversable deltas so you 'rewind' everything one frame at a time.

There's a few things you would probably want to do like change the way the camera moves to be smoother, so it's not quite so jittery on massive movement changes.

Edit: Additionally, you can read the pain i went through hacking it into IaMP over on the now basically dead mizuumi blog.

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Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: WakeupSRK podcast:"Being only on PC does not prevent MBAACC from being @EVO2012"

« on: August 28, 2011, 08:45:18 AM »

i'll believe it when i see it.

evo's been anti-ANIME for awhile now.

60

Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: The MB:AA:CC:PC thread: at least the netplay will be good

« on: August 27, 2011, 11:25:20 AM »

So a few days ago the original th075Caster guy, Weltail, talked about netplay for MBAACC PC on the site, and things like how hard it'd be to do officially, the likelihood of foreigners doing it for them, possible fracturing of the userbase, piracy, etc.

メルブラのネット対戦、実装するだけなら技術的に難しいところは無いと思う。色々穿って考えてみる
・単純に実装が難しい→浮動小数点のズレを解消できないという意味？
・ロビー周り・ユーザーインターフェースの実装が難しい→メーカが自前でロビー提供は無謀と思うのでこれは無さそう（売ったからには保証がいるような）
・ユーザ認証まわりが難しい→海外販売ルートが充実しなければ、いつかは海外で割れ蔓延+Caster作られる。現実的に海外販売の充実はコストに見合うのかどうか。国内向け？
・デバッグされないようにするのが難しい→時間をかければ暗号化・パッケージ化も解除される。定期的なアップデートは真っ当なユーザに負担あるだろうからこれもなさそう。GameGuard検討してるなら目途は立つはず。
まとめてみると、”同期ズレを解消するのが時間かかりそう。それよりネット対戦省いてリリースする”という意味が濃厚のような気がする。
ユーザ認証のあたりはCasterが割れの象徴になりそうで嫌だが、悪貨は良貨を駆逐するということで個人的に折り合いをつけるしかない。Caster自体は単なる再利用しやすいコード。
何も関係ないところから眺めていられたらいいけれども。

I put up a thing on the MBCaster page giving my thoughts on it.

• I want MBAACC to have good netplay. MBCaster has relatively few desyncs. I don't believe the FPU issue will be a large problem.
  
• American Internet latency is awful. 50ms to 100ms average, often more. Japanese netplay generally does not understand this, and lags badly. Akatsuki Blitzkampf's netplay is literally unplayable. Touhou Hisouten uses double the necessary input delay.(WHY?!? Fucking shitty game.) Even commercial works like Street Fighter IV and Marvel vs Capcom 3 are almost unplayable online. So, I do not trust Japanese netplay to work well in America, and as such fan works like Caster and GGPO are very important to me.
  
• On a related note: 3rd Strike Online has amazing netplay and is a great port. Buy it, guys. Support GGPO!
  
• Piracy is unavoidable. If it is not through Caster it will be through something else. It is better to make them into customers, people generally will want to pay if it is available to them. Americans would absolutely get Melty if it were available on Steam.
• In my mind, GameGuard is malware. I will never install any software that uses GameGuard, it is far too invasive. Worst of all, it doesn't work. Using it will lead to pirates having a better experience than normal users. Unacceptable.
  
• (Weltail, French Bread should totally hire you to write it. Add rollbacks to it! It'll be awesome!) (... And let's play Suimusou sometime!)

61

Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: About CasterStats future

« on: August 20, 2011, 10:30:42 AM »

i really don't personally care about interface things, as i'm a linux nerd who is entirely okay with irc and command line utilities

just don't make me use some .net or java piece of crap okay

62

Other Games / Re: Dark's Souls's's's

« on: August 20, 2011, 09:28:25 AM »

Haha, it's the top ad on youtube today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93LFz_j5fQA New trailer, now coming pre-dubbed.

http://www.fromsoftware.jp/darksouls/contents/map_sound.html Area map and streamable soundtrack segments.

http://www.preparetodie.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1156&start=105 Someone actually got to play the game and is giving out information. This same guy destroyed the E3 demo, so he's not a bad player when he's saying it's ridiculously hard.

So hype.

63

Other Games / Re: Umineko Fytan

« on: August 19, 2011, 09:05:17 AM »

the problem with ougon isn't its combo system. it's that the combo system is all it has. the footsie game is shallow trash and almost all the 'mindgames' are based around the meter system, by which i mean there aren't any because you're gaining a ridiculous amount of meter from pretty much everything that happens.

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Other Games / Re: Dark's Souls's's's

« on: August 18, 2011, 11:02:10 PM »

I'm definitely picking up Dark Souls.
I might actually go all out and get whatever special edition thingamajiggie they come out with.

And psh, dex builds. S'all about that faith build dawg.

faith builds are pretty weak at the 100+ level range. the regen from blessed equipment is pretty nice but not nice enough when faith doesn't offer anything you can't get from something else. knockdown + wrath of god would also be pretty good if players weren't so ridiculously durable at that level range, too. so it's basically just The Mirdan Hammer Build. which is pretty strong, but not very flexible.

hands of god -are- cool though.

up there mostly what you'll see is strength(dbs, knight sword, great axe), dexterity(kilij, uchigatana, spiked shield), or magic focused builds.

65

Other Games / Re: Dark's Souls's's's

« on: August 17, 2011, 08:56:33 PM »

googled planescape torment...   
....Even if it is a decent game, I refuse to play any RPG that could easily be named "Wizards and Goblins" and people not give it a second thought.

...

...

wow.

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Other Games / Re: Dark's Souls's's's

« on: August 17, 2011, 02:20:49 PM »

Ill be getting it as I really enjoyed Demons Souls. Though I never did get that fucking pure bladestone.

ahahaha

I had a dex build char (dual uchigatanas, yum) so I needed one. After some reading and planning I went in with low-luck, pure black world tendency, no large sword of searching. This is because luck actually fucks up your chances of getting one.

Took about an hour and a half of grinding that one black skeleton.

..Worst part is, I still need a second one at some point for the other katana (it's a Moon+5 right now, and does less damage) but I can't be bothered to do it.

67

Other Games / Re: Dark's Souls's's's

« on: August 17, 2011, 11:58:37 AM »

there's a new batch of screenshots today! get hype to play a class that comes naked out of the box.

I don't plan on it for several reasons:

1: I don't own the system
2: I'm not particularly fond of the genre.

... what genre is that? game plays like an arcade game with rpg elements. at least, i play it that way. it's like the new generation of dungeons and dragons: shadows over mystara. or something.

(also it's both ps3 and 360 this time.)

68

Other Games / Re: Umineko Fytan

« on: August 17, 2011, 11:54:59 AM »

this game is 800 kinds of bad and i'm not sure why it's getting as much attention as it is.

then again, street fighter x tekken plays very similarly, so maybe the future of fighting games is shit.

(also, beatrice has that costume in one of her win poses.)

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Other Games / Dark's Souls's's's

« on: August 16, 2011, 08:36:22 PM »

Is anybody else here picking up Dark Souls? I am a huge huge huge Demon's Souls fan and am totally picking this up. (preordering the game nets you the fairly snappy looking collector's edition)

Also, this dub of the newest trailer is hilarious.

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Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: The MB:AA:CC:PC thread: at least the netplay will be good

« on: August 16, 2011, 04:42:53 PM »

If you liked mbac at all odds are you'll freakin' love mbaa as far as I'm concerned, since i believe it to be an overall better game

actually wasn't that really much of a fan of mbac. i like my bullshit zoning/footsie games and it wasn't until aa that those really seemed to start taking off.

i mostly just finished up the work on mbcaster because i couldn't stand leaving the (much larger at the time) mbac community with the spaniard's buggy as shit caster, when i was working on iamp's at the same time.

edit: also exciel's post is awesome

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Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: The MB:AA:CC:PC thread: at least the netplay will be good

« on: August 16, 2011, 02:59:36 PM »

Seriously would $$$ actually help you in giving an incentive to work at it? Or to perhaps sort of give a shit?

i will not mix hacking and moneys.

the end.

i've said this since the beginning and it hasn't changed.

72

Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: The MB:AA:CC:PC thread: at least the netplay will be good

« on: August 16, 2011, 02:16:27 PM »

Is updating framedisp really harder than rollback caster?

Or is it just the fact that you're going to have to do more than one thing once the game's released?

it's more about quantity than anything else yeah.

i give absolutely no guarantees on rollback anything, that's a longterm anything if i decide to go for it. i gave a big fat maybe on that for a reason. you don't even know how much work it'd be and i don't know how much time i'd be able or willing to give to it then. for all i know i'll play it and decide i hate the game and my rage will be the kind of thing heard for ages.

iamp's took two months to go from "i have a plan" to "it works 95% of the time", and a few more months before it hit 99%. i don't think anything else would go faster. you can read about it over at an article i wrote on mizuumi. it still has a few bugs, like uncommon desyncs (mostly yuyuko/patchouli related in my experience) and spectator desyncs(the players are still fine, but the specs desync. no clue on this one.). there's not enough of a player base to make fixing them worth my while.

also, bear in mind that amp is probably the simplest of the doujin fighters available, the coding is very plain. more elaborate things would take more effort.

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Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: The MB:AA:CC:PC thread: at least the netplay will be good

« on: August 16, 2011, 10:45:09 AM »

i just realized that i'll have to update framedisp

shit

74

Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: The MB:AA:CC:PC thread: at least the netplay will be good

« on: August 15, 2011, 01:21:48 PM »

I translated that, like, a couple pages back when I was yelling at Chibi. Y'all are old.

I fully expect Doujin Quality netplay. That is, unusably terrible.

75

Melty Blood Auditorium / Re: The MB:AA:CC:PC thread: at least the netplay will be good

« on: August 14, 2011, 04:45:59 PM »

this is soku you dumb fuck

they both got touhous in them, man, how are you supposed to tell the difference

aside from soku playing like utter dogshit, i mean