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Capcom Says Online Play Is the Future of Fighting Games
Capcom's Yoshinori Ono spoke with Videogamer recently about the upcoming Street Fighter IV title. He discussed several features of the game, including the lag during online play being a "huge problem," and the decision to remove parrying from this offering. He also mentioned that once better infrastructure is in place, online play "will definitely be the future of the fighting game."
Of course online play is the future. But as the summery pointed out, there is just too much lag right now. Take lag and add in some spots here in the US that simply can't get broadband at the moment (just about anywhere outside of a small town only has dial-up or satellite as options) and even broadband connections lag sometimes.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
You thought lag was a problem for FPS? You haven't seen anything yet.
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Fighters like Street Fighter IV an Soul Calibur IV are being slowed down so that they can better deal with lag. Fans of Street Fighter and Virtua Fighter are usually counting frames and timing their moves precisely, and at the same time enjoy the frantic pace of the game. Street Fighter II Turbo was especially popular because of its speed. It's unfortunate that these aspects have to be toned down.
Twinstiq, game news
That about sums it up.
"There is no real right or wrong, just what the majority accepts at the time."
I'm playing a lot Day Of Defeat: Source these days, on a DSL connection with 2Mbit/s, and lag is not a problem as long as I stick to European servers (I'm living in Germany).
It is different for US servers, when the data have to travel to the US and back the lag becomes a noticable disadvantage. But that is unavoidable due to the distance, even ideal routers cannot get around the limited speed of light.
Conclusions:
-Broadband, even with modest specs (2Mbit/s is the entry offer in Germany these days, unless you have a bad connection), will do nicely.
-A games company that does not put up separate servers for each continent will have lag problems and deserves them for incompetence
C - the footgun of programming languages
But if the future of games is to keep playing GameVersion+1, then count me out (unless the theme is similar but the gameplay changes, i.e. Zelda, Metroid).
Yeah.. like increasing the speed of light. Good luck with that.
From the article, it looks like they're also confused between bandwidth and latency. Slightly simplified, it's the latency that makes it impossible to do real-time melee games well.
GameRanger - multiplayer gaming service for PC and Mac games
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wave Net was fast and lag free back the mid 90's so this is not new.
In FPSs you can hide the lag by calculating the hits client side and displaying the results immediately, then confirming them on the server later. This works well because it's rare for players to act simultaneously, and when they do it's rare for one attack to interrupt another. Mastering the map layout and being able to predict your opponent's movement while remaining unpredictable yourself is more important than reaction time.
This prediction game ("yomi" in fighting game slang, from the Japanese for "reading", as in reading your opponent) is also critical to fighting games, but reaction time is much more important than in FPSs because you're always watching your opponent (no FPS style ambushes or surprise attacks), and attacks are often interrupted by other attacks.
Casual players might not notice the lag, but for high level play with traditional fast paced fighting games it's going to be unacceptable. Modifying the gameplay is the only solution, and a lot of hardcore players are going to be unhappy about that.
The games the article refers to are typically peer-peer, not client-server, and do not use dedicated servers. In fact, a two player game will perform worse with a dedicated server since the traffic has to go via two links rather than a single, "direct" one.
The point being that without dedicated servers, it doesn't matter where the matchmaking server is, because game play does not go through it. Segregating users geographically makes it easier to find players near you, but the same can be done with ranking them by latency.
GameRanger - multiplayer gaming service for PC and Mac games
Back in the mid 90's we didn't have hordes of people downloading crap from torrents and P2P, we didn't have the masses watching videos on YouTube, Hulu and the like, and spam was at much lower levels.
It doesn't matter if your game doesn't use much bandwidth if the "tubes are clogged".
There aren't many sources out there about it, but it looks like the WaveNet version of the game never made it out of testing in Chicago.
Also, while it's hard to know for sure without knowing more about the WaveNet game, I suspect that a 2D 16-bit-era fighter is going to send significantly less data back and forth than Street Fighter IV would need to.
Goo goo g'joob.
...a job for an Italian plumber that I know!
Too bad they removed parrying, it was one of my favorite elements of Third Strike.
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(^.^) INFECTED
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I don't think you'd seriously need to send that much more data. They don't actually send any graphical data. Just information about which buttons your pressing. The computer on the other end can recreate your moves based complete on your button presses.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
The first rule of online fighting games is you don't talk about online fighting games!?
Of course I didn't RTFA... why would I do that? You really are new here aren't you? Don't let my UID fool you.
Rare for FPS players to act simultaneously? You must be a camper. Walking round a corner seeing someone and you both firing simultaneously is very common in the FPSs I've played.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
The parent is correct - something fundamental will have to change about fighting games for them to work online.
Even if online lag was reduced to zero (e.g. direct LAN cable connection), there would still be problems. Most fighting games currently are synchronised with the TV refresh rate (60Hz), and chances are each TV will be out of sync. More practically, the fighting action is so fast now that even 50ms of delay, low enough for a FPS game, is too much for dealing with things like counters.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
This sounds really nice and mystical, but it doesn't have anything to do with reality.
Perhaps not your reality, but it makes a hell of a difference to mine. Knowing the maps is essential, or you won't know where to look for danger or be much good at spotting partially concealed enemies. No matter how good your reactions, having your gun already pointed where the enemy is about to appear is an advantage. If you don't know the map, you can't predict this.
Unpredictability gets me a lot of kills too. A common tactic of mine (which rarely fails) is to feint one way round an obstacle between me an an enemy, so they expect me to reappear from (say) the left side of the cover. While behind cover I change direction, appearing on the right of the cover. They're looking the wrong way, I pwn them.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
We also have tubes a damn sight bigger than back then. The tubes aren't clogged, at least the big ones. You ISP's tubes may be clogged, if they are then you need to find a new ISP or to pay your existing ISP more money for lower contention.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
Yes, you have to know the map, but predicting where the enemy will be doesn't work the way Mprx thinks it does.
In this case you hear one player or see rather one type the proverbial "CLICK".
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
This would make that tactic very predictable.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
I've got good reaction time, but I'll still get pwned in 1v1 against a really good player. With enough practice the "twitch" aiming becomes completely automatic, and everyone converges to the fastest speed humanly possible. If this is all there is then the game is reduced to luck. In reality, maneuvering so you see your opponent before they see you is very important, and this requires the same high level mind-games as all competitive sports.
LPBs still have an inherent advantage though. Back in the day I used to play QuakeWorld and often pw0ned players with 1/5 the ping of my dialup connection (usually about 180-220ms). That was due to tactics and map knowledge, same as you I'd bet, but when two players of similar skill run around a corner and see each other at the same time then the LPB will win.
Back on topic, I imagine this would be far worse for fighting games like Street Fighter. My understanding is that online games on consoles get hosted on one of the players consoles so unless the game introduces artificial latency for the local player, said local player would be at an extreme advantage.
Nick
It would only be predictable if I always did it and you knew it was me you saw run behind the cover. The former isn't true and the latter is rarely true. The simple fact is that it works - people rarely correctly predict my actions.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
It is definitely an advantage to know the map, because it dictates the opponents' moves to some extent. Especially on the start of a round when both sides rush to get a head start on the objectives.
Example:
In Avalanche (Day Of Defeat) there is a standard exchange of grenades across the marketplace on the start of a new round. Because the opponents will be roughly in the place where the grenades detonate if they rush. If they don't rush, they fall behind in getting to the center flag.
C - the footgun of programming languages
The future is now! Soon every American home will integrate their television, phone and computer! You'll be able to visit the Louvre on one channel, or watch female mud wrestling on another. You can do your shopping at home, or play Mortal Kombat with a friend from Vietnam! There's no end to the possibilities!
No. There will always be differences in reaction times and accuracy.
Yes, but this has nothing to do with mystical statements like the one you posted earlier.
"Find a new ISP" is easier said than done. A lot of people have absolutely zero choice when it comes to high-speed internet.
I do agree that the internet as a whole as more bandwidth than in the 90's, however the usage (IMO) is currently growing a lot faster than the available capacity (again, torrents, p2p, youtube, hulu, voip, spam, bots, etc - and that's not even mentioning things like legal online music stores, video stores, 10MB Flash "websites", internet radio, etc).
Yes, but this has nothing to do with mystical statements like the one you posted earlier.
What did he say that was mystical? I must have missed the bit about harnessing your chi-flow.
The coolest thing with online fighters is that they can hold 1000 players in a small area all fighting at once instead of like 64. The trick is that you only need to worry about people near you, so you can send packets increasingly at lower intervals the farther they are from you. I'm one of the few people that even knows this. My website is www.roamingdragon.com. I have all the hard parts done. I'll be doing beta on the web in like a year.
God spoke to me.
Yes, dial-up is simi-usable for computer gaming, but totally unsuitable for console gaming if only for the fact that just about no major system has a modem.
But at least with console games, you can actually invite your friends over and play locally, even if they can't unplug the family PC and carry it to your house. And something like Street Fighter doesn't even benefit from an individual view per player, unlike a first-person shooter or a war sim.
A lot of people have absolutely zero choice when it comes to high-speed internet.
You meant "near zero choice". If it were absolutely zero choice, that would even rule out moving your family to a home where a better connection is offered.
If we are talking about high level play and the issue of simultaneous actions, I would say that it matters just as much as a fighting game in a fps. Sure you do not have as many actions occurring simultaneously but the few ones that do occur are even more important!
At least in counter strike I know at least half the time someone would peek for an AWP shot (a scrim not pub play) it was a matter of both of the players shooting the other player and hitting, but whoever acted that milisecond earlier cancelling the other players bullet in mid air would get the kill.
Try watching a lan match of pro players and you will see that everyone knows that unpredictability rarely occurs at such a high level of play, and when it does its a definite kill
GGPO seems to do a pretty good job of taking some latency hiding tricks and applying them to fighting games. It sounds like Capcom's even got a license for this stuff (http://www.capcom-unity.com/s-kill/blog/2008/08/29/ggpo_networking_guru_talks_sf_hd_remix_), so maybe they'll use it for Street Fighter IV (though Ono's ignorance about it is a bit disturbing)
Back in the mid 90's we didn't have hordes of people downloading crap from torrents and P2P, we didn't have the masses watching videos on YouTube, Hulu and the like, and spam was at much lower levels.
It doesn't matter if your game doesn't use much bandwidth if the "tubes are clogged".
Those things wouldn't really have effected UMK3 WaveNet anyway since it's not like these machines were running across the internet.
Arcades with wavenet machines had ISDN lines that connected them to a Midway headquarters. They had a direct line to run a few arcade machines over.
1 (short ton / firkin) = 89.1432354 slugs / keg
well they have done this on pc. An emulator called GGPO predicts the output and such, and gameplay seems lagless.
Unfortunately it is a MAME type emulator but it is VERY GOOD stil in beta stages. ive tried it myself and it is remarkable.
That's exactly what I meant. A choice means at least two ISPs who offer high-speed internet (DSL, cable or otherwise).
I have zero choice, i.e. there's only one high-speed provider here.
DJ Tepples? On my Slashdot?
Nice simfiles.
-AC
But that's one very specific situation in the game and even for experienced players it is more of a gamble than aquired skill. Of course it can still has a huge influence on outcome of the game.
But compared to a fighting game where every move is basically a question of attack and block, action and reaction it is relatively small.
Of course it depends on the game, some fighting games are more timing based than others. But with some of the most popular for competetive play, the only successful attacks are a result of a split-secon reaction to an opponents lost cover. You screw the reaction time and the attacks don't hit. To counteract this you must change the opponents ability to cover. And that's a massive intervention in the gameplay system.
My current FPS flavor is COD4, in COD4 when close enough you can see an enemy's name tag, roughly 9 meters distance. More than the length of a freight container. Which is where something like this may happen.
I don't doubt this tactic works, because it does, I've used it. Just not all that often.
Though in a spin of this, I will circle around, change direction than go prone, and stab someone as they run past. The nametag thing only works when you have an opponent in a certain section of the center of your screen.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
I'm playing CoD 4 at the moment too. I don't find the nametag appearing very often, perhaps I do it a bit further from the containers (and it is usually containers) than you. Because of the flow of the game I get a chance to use it regularly with the container in the corner by the crashed helicopter in Countdown - the angles are just right, but the distance can be a bit far sometimes.
The buildings on Crash are awesome for leaping out of windows, circling round and stabbing people in the back. Never really use the prone tactic - it's a press-and-hold thing on the PS3 so isn't very quick to do and lying prone in most places leaves me more vulnerable than I'd like.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News