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Matrix-Style Bullet Time for Realtime Online Games
gcnaddict writes "Creating a slowdown in time on one end of an online game while maintaining normal speed on another was once one of those impossibilities which should never have happened. However, Finnish researchers have successfully invented a way to replicate a bullet-time-esque scene on one end of a real time multiplayer game without affecting the play speed on the other end(s). Of course, there are some slight issues which may never be resolved, such as when a player may occasionally think they have shot an opponent in a game and is surprised when his target refuses to die..."
My brain hurts trying to think of how this works.
http://www.specialistsmod.net/
The game has had bullet-time for quite some time, and only effects players in your immediate area. This allows the rest of the game to go along unhampered by your slow-flying bullets.
just what we need. European-designer-lag. I get enough matrix-style lag already, thatnk-you-very-much. (If this is more than just smooth lag, somebody please explain it to me because I'm obviously missing something important...)
On a side note, I had wondered if a space-time distortion bubble could be created in a multiplayer game. Sort of a local bubble of temporarily slowed time, which as the effect wears off, hyper-accelerates to catch up to the rest of the game world. The difference from lag there would be that all player within the bubble would experience the same slow time, and a player entering ot exiting the bubble would pass through an area of distorted time as they transition from one timeframe to the other... not sure what sort of paradoxes would have to be sidestepped to make this work right. any astrophysacists want to step in and take it from here?
hmmm, I think I just described the Tokyo-Jupiter temporal distortion from Ra-Xaphan...
One of the problems with hiding lag is that players cannot tell when lag has effected a kill.Without actually being able to demo it, I think this technique will just increase this confusion.
Also, the article mentions that lag commonly varies from 10-60ms (i.e. optimistic estimates) and does not mention whether that effects how much bullet time you can have. I would say it is sensible to suggest that less bullet time is available for 10ms people than for 60ms people.
If this is so, then how well does the system perform when the lag is varying wildly as it is want to do?? Does the play get a fixed lowest estimate for bullet time, or does the player never know how much they will get??
Is this one of those system they test in a "lab" with a fake lag generator and so forth? Or did they do real world tests??
I really hate articles that don't mention the important bits....
Realizing Bullet Time Effect in Multiplayer Games with Local Perception Filters (PDF)
This method involves the introduction of excess latency to the system so that the player who is working in slow motion can be allowed to "catch up" to the server's actual state for as long as he is in bullet time. The problem with this method is twofold.
First of all, there is the issue of lag in the standard game. Unless the server-side prediction is able to perfectly determine the paths of the slowed player, it will not be able to send an accurate picture of where that player is to his opponents. This will make a bullet-time'd player either invulnerable or just very difficult to damage. The other problem arises when a player is bullet-timing and kills another player. The player could perhaps be completely out of site from the bullet-timing player, but because his lagged position is still visible to the bullet-timing player, the hidden opponent could still be killed. The frustration this would add could never make up for the gameplay benefits of such a system.
Some things are not merely hard, but impossible.
Slow-time for me, while the other player sees normal speed? No thanks, I used to play quake on dial-up all the time.
That way, you enter bullet time by doing a bullet time move (step left, say) so the other person's computer knows what animation to show, and then just shows where on the map your player is.
Preventing the use of bullet time as a period to make up your mind would hopefully mean that the computer wouldn't have to make a choice in advance of the other player's movement being made.
Of course they could just blur the graphics badly and obscure everything I guess, if it's a matter of presentation.
I think what he meant is this:
There is a a core point where the temporal distortion occurs. The properties: The closer you go to this point, the slower you can move (animation/response-wise). Let's say a radius of 25 meters or so. People at the very centre of it would move at 1/10th speed. People 23 meters away from the centre would move 9/10th speed. People 26 meters away, and beyond, would move 10/10th speed.
People inside the distortion would see things the same was as people outside of the distortion.
The benefit of this distortion would be for someone who needs to perform an excessively complicated move (think: fighter game supercombo) and attempting it in slo-mo would be significantly easier.
Also, perhaps dodging bullets would be beneficial as well. Say you're caught in the middle of an ambush, with fire from every direction, such a distortion would be useful in buying yourself a few more seconds, until your friendly camper sniper can take out the enemies (whose bullet would also slow once it enters the distortion).
Now, in terms of the hyperspeed-up once the distortion expires -- this is purely for cinematic purposes. Let's say the distortion lasted 10 seconds. We can keep track as to how many [animation] frames each player performed in the distortion (to keep track of how fast you were going). If normal rate is 10 fps, then someone who experienced 1/10th speed would experience 10 frames. Once the distortion is over, let's say we want it to catch up in half the time. That would mean it would have to hyperspeed it up for 5 seconds, at a rate of 100fps.
Someone who experienced 5/10th speed, would get their hyperspeed at 20 fps.
This is, indeed, pointless. But it could provide a neat effect.
Scenario: You're ambushed by 5 gun-toting wankers. You, magically, create a time distortion fields. Gun-toting wankers shoot at you, you dodge for 10 seconds while dealing out the occasional punch, kick and knife stab. 10 seconds are up, your gameplay speeds up x10, while gun-toting wankers try to aim at you at super-high movement speed, you escape -- roadrunner style. Meep meep!
This could certainly introduce some interesting gameplay.
- shazow
"a player may occasionally think they have shot an opponent in a game and is surprised when his target refuses to die..."
:)
Well, this is normal. This happens in Counter Strike all the time. You think you just emptied the magazine of your AK-47 to other player's back but after a second you get shot yourself. Then you check the damages you made to him from console only to see that every bullet got lost in bit-heaven
You don't know what you don't know.
has become "this is my idea of how bullet-time should work," this is my idea of how bullet-time should work:
Player's are either moving "normally" or "quickly" at all times.
The bullet-time restriction must be very strict : a difficult to get power-up, or a fairly short total time per level/game (a la 60 seconds per race of extra 50 hp to pass in some open-wheel racing tours)
All players actually move at the same rate (in m/s, or whatever).
Any player moving quickly cannot be hit by any aimed/directed attack such as a bullet or knife (this is why bullet-time needs to be very limited). Area/detonation damage still applies.
Any player moving normally sees a blurred representation of quickly moving players that is delayed from where the quick player actually is. Basically, you can react to where he was a second ago, but because he's "moving faster" than you, you have to lead him. Instead of the computer having to worry about prediction models, you get to! Fun!
When a player transitions from normal to quick, the player's blurred representation increasingly separates from his actual position until it reaches the maximum delay of 1 second (or whatever seems to work best).
When a player transitions from quick to normal, the player pops instantly from the blurred/delayed position to the actual position. This makes the choice of when you return to normal time as important as the choice of when you start bullet-time. It also allows the "I've run up to you and gotten past your defences and now I'm going to blow your head off" moment.
Note that neither transition - in fact no part of bullet-time at all - will necessarily appear different to the player transitioning. All bullet-time does as far as the quickly moving player is concerned is make you dodge all the stuff that's about to kill you (and you don't have to try).
The main disadvantage is, it doesn't have the "wow, cool, everything's moving slow" effect. Oh, well . . ..
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