ClientPrediction restrictions in competition servers?

(Kl3ppy) #81

net_clientPrediction
·Definition : Amount of prediction (in milliseconds) added (or subtracted, when using negative numbers) to the already existing gameworld clientside prediction (e.g. other players movements predictions).
·Increasing it :
-Advantage : Less lags (If an information from the server is missing -lost or late-, the frame would have been already created by prediction : no freeze).
-Disadvantage : Frames can be wrongly predicted ; i.e. the more you set it high, the more you’ll experience ghost hitting (that’s when you plain hit a player, but it doesn’t register damage : your PC -clientside- was drawing by prediction a player but he actually wasn’t at this location on the serverside)
-Advice : Increase net_clientPrediction until you arn’t experiencing lags anymore ; then counterbalance the disadvantage of clientPrediction by lowering “net_clientmaxprediction”

ClientPrediction is like predicting weather in real life : “this cloud has gone this way all day long, we predict it’ll continue in the same direction tomorrow”. Sometimes it fails to predict right, especially if it’s a one week prediction instead of a few hour one. So the more you increase net_clientPrediction, the more you’ll possibly see on screen some weird things :
"woops… guess what, the cloud’s way that we are predicting since 5 hours, we have just received his exact position from our satelite ; Actually it isn’t where we were drawing it all this time.

net_clientmaxprediction
·Definition : It cap the client prediction ; it is set by default to 1000ms (useless at this setting). Basically it’s a gate : any frame predicted ahead from this gate will be cancelled and recalculate later.
·Decreasing it :
-Advantage : It will cancel frames predicted too much ahead (the more ahead frames are predicted, the more erroneous they could be).
-Disadvantage : If you lower it too much you’ll experience the worst lags ever.
-Advice : Lower it until you reach the “worst lags ever”-barrier, then increase it a bit (e.g. 10ms ; it’ll depends of how high your ping is jumping).

net_clientMaxRate
useless, most servers have a limitation. if the client has higher values in his cfg than the server allowes, the server kind of overwrite them. So its the best to set it to 25600.

(r3fleX) #82

Interesting explanation’s Kleppy, thanks for the read :slight_smile:

Im not sure how accurate you were, but you sound like you know what your talking about :cool: I guess i got a little research & experimenting to do…

(Kl3ppy) #83

Well, i dont know exactly what im talking about, but i have read several stuff about this prediction topic, and that what i posted is what i think what it is doing. But i also think, when you set the clientprediction to 0, you dont need to change the maxprediction, but im not sure.
Also when prediction is 0 you cant see anything on the lagometer because it shows always red and yellow things. but when you increase the value you will notice some difference. Dont know if its just a placebo on my side.

(DrFunkenstein) #84

Thanks for the explanation, Kleppy!

The reason I asked about this is that it reminds me of the discussion players were having about cl_timenudge in Quake 3 based games. Using negative values for that created a lot of controversy and server admins started to pose limits on that to stop people from getting an “unfair advantage”, but the way I understand it, that was just an urban myth. Here’s a link to an article that explains how that cvar worked in Q3 and it provides some insight in how games deal with internet problems in general. I realize it’s about a different engine but I wouldn’t be surprised if ET:QW works in a similar way.

Like I said, I can definitely see similarities between the discussion about net_clientprediction and cl_timenudge but I lack the knowledge to say if it really works the same way as cl_timenudge does.

It would be great if someone from SD could provide us with some insight on this topic. We have restrictions on our pub server on 2 of the 3 cvars mentioned in this thread, but I’ll gladly remove them if I’m certain that changing those won’t affect other players.

Which seems to be the main question to me.

Dr. Funkenstein

(Ecano) #85

Good explanations! +1
Now, we just learned that the net_clientprediction equal to 0 is doing ‘nothing’, let’s said no predicting. But would be expected that negative values were doing nothing also, instead a erratic hitting behavior… :confused:

(Breo) #86

[QUOTE=RE-L;397013]Good explanations! +1
Now, we just learned that the net_clientprediction equal to 0 is doing ‘nothing’, let’s said no predicting. But would be expected that negative values were doing nothing also, instead a erratic hitting behavior… :confused:[/QUOTE]

Negative values does something you can check it with: net_showAsyncStats 1 <- turn this on and change the net_clientprediction.

These (advanced) settings are available to “optimise” your connection for a more accurate position of the enemies?
If it’s possible to change your own position (lag/unhits) for other players it’s ridicules anyway :confused:

(Gvardman) #87

Negative values do something for sure, you can check it on lagometer. Try 40 and then -40 and you will see differense.

(Gvardman) #88

Btw i think if you set net_predictionerrordecay to 0, it will totally disable prediction but you will get some lags. I think it can help when you play with high ping.

(.Chris.) #89

Someone from SD explained them all on the old forums, curse you Activision!

Was a lengthy discussion about it all also (in which SD responded), some teams definitely abused these and other cvars a while back, I remember trying some things out from Amigo’s config once when he was in Team Poland, I couldn’t hit bugger all with it though.

Related video, http://youtu.be/GPoFzNnmrCs

(Kl3ppy) #90

How reliable is this net_showAsyncStats thing? It says that i dont have any packet loss but in the upper right corner the sign for lost connection appears from time to time. it just appears for some very short time but i dont know if its really a short connection lost or just some etqw thing :smiley:
I use the settings samu and lausl tested yesterday and i get the same result, a clean lagometer without any green, yellow and red bars.

(DrFunkenstein) #91

[QUOTE=.Chris.;397040]Someone from SD explained them all on the old forums, curse you Activision!

Was a lengthy discussion about it all also (in which SD responded), some teams definitely abused these and other cvars a while back, I remember trying some things out from Amigo’s config once when he was in Team Poland, I couldn’t hit bugger all with it though.

Related video, http://youtu.be/GPoFzNnmrCs[/QUOTE]

Did some searching with the “Wayback machine” on www.archive.org but no success so far.

Dr. Funkenstein

(timestart) #92

[QUOTE=Kleppy;397061]How reliable is this net_showAsyncStats thing? It says that i dont have any packet loss but in the upper right corner the sign for lost connection appears from time to time. it just appears for some very short time but i dont know if its really a short connection lost or just some etqw thing :smiley:
I use the settings samu and lausl tested yesterday and i get the same result, a clean lagometer without any green, yellow and red bars.[/QUOTE]

That icon shows up when your client hasn’t received a snapshot from the server for too long. That can be due to packet loss but it can also just be lag meaning you need to use a higher client max prediction setting.

(Dthy) #93

Using net_showAsyncStats it shows my prediction is ~30-40, despite having net_clientPrediction set to “0”, weird…

(Tandem) #94

[QUOTE=DrFunkenstein;396987]The reason I asked about this is that it reminds me of the discussion players were having about cl_timenudge in Quake 3 based games.

Like I said, I can definitely see similarities between the discussion about net_clientprediction and cl_timenudge but I lack the knowledge to say if it really works the same way as cl_timenudge does.
[/QUOTE]

I remember the timenudge issue in rtcw, yeah funk very similiar also,
same with et.

I see some values here worth trying.

(edxot) #95

0 to 20 is only suited for pliscin-7 15 ping latency. he does not need any more help.

better make limit from 5 to 100. suited for pings from 10 to 200. everyone included (i hope).

(Kordin) #96

Already asked during the STU vs failwhale match but got no answer. So i hope admins will give me an answer here.

Why have u removed the net setting restrictions again without saying sth? u agreed to put them on the servers and just deleted them a few days later again.

(Brontoz) #97

For feel free playing with prediction -30, everything simple…

(r3fleX) #98

+1.

I really don’t understand whats so hard about editing a cfg once and leaving it like that. You have complained in the past how you don’t have access to server cfgs often, so why do you keep changing it then changing it back.

It’s not like we don’t notice, its so easy just to type “pb_cvarlist” in the console to display the server restrictions.

(rUBBEN) #99

We will take out our servers from the list because Stupidogoblin doesn’t manage to make this restrictions (they leave each time the server restarts…). Sorry all !

(Breo) #100

Server #1 you mean? Rackage has a crappy controlpanel, we had also a server there a while ago :s