Headshots and ping / reaction / network times

(bigstick) #1

I was reading the anti-cheaters and timing advantage posts … don’t know about the timing stuff, but I always got a boatload more headshots on public servers where my ping/lag times are very low. Anyone else do better like this or just me :???:

This expert on timing stuff gives the math showing why ping times and stuff really do make a HUGE difference :eek:
http://galeb.etf.bg.ac.yu/~tomcat/beapro1.htm
Also need to add any delays caused by your DSL Modem or firewall, so add on t11 for 11 different things that can delay you and give advantage to opponents. he also makes good point that slower PCs may suffer additional delay sending/receiving stuff to server, since the computer is already maxxed out.

If the things above r true, then anyone with any kind of cheat that gives a slight timing advantage … very bad =( How to catch these bad guys?

dont know how accurate …
http://galeb.etf.bg.ac.yu/~tomcat/reflex.htm
http://www.fetchfido.co.uk/games/reaction/reaction_test.htm

(SCDS_reyalP) #2

Thats a nice article. The only exception I would make is that (in most quake engine games anyway) server FPS isn’t a factor, since clients run as their commands come in, not at sv_fps (which is a good thing, because quake engine games can’t run at the frame rates he assumes!). There of course is still some latency there, but the number is harder to quantify. It is also possible for a number of the factors he uses to overlap (e.g. mouse sample and gfx frame happen in parallel).

As to getting more headshots with low pings, I find it depends on a number of things. For me, an unstable ping is far worse than a steady high ping. ETMain (and shrub I presume) have some serious bugs in the antilag code, which also makes hitting with high pings harder. I have played on servers where I get a high, smooth ping and with recent etpro versions, I don’t find getting headshots to be a huge problem. The disadvantage comes from delayed reaction.

As for possible ‘cheats’ that give better timing, the article itself makes it pretty clear that is a non-issue. The biggest single factor is human reflex, followed by things that have hard physical limits (network latency, frame rates). So the claim that there is some magic tweak which gives an unfair timing advantage smells strongly of bovine excrement. :moo: Unless you want to call having a faster computer or better connection a ‘cheat’ :banana:

(bigstick) #3

I don’t understand the stuff about clients running what commands (the 20 frames per second from the server???).

mmmmm … sometimes i get random pings … maybe because my Athlon XP1700 is too slow? … but i turned the grafix stuff way down, and i have lots o memory and Gforce2 Titanium something or other. But I get steady low pings on several servers … same ones i get head shots easier on.

Don’t cheats reduce the time??? some cheats … just pull the trigger and the cheat auto-corrects ur aim so that ur reaction time isnt that important. So, if u know someone is behind the tank/tree, u just pull the trigger, jump around the corner, and do ur best to point. The aimbot helps adjust ur aim, and it just looks like ur a great player to spectatorz. So u can almost get ur reaction time down to zero … sortof … u know what I mean? I don’t understand how this doesn’t give better timing???

What i really hate the most is the newer cheats that have adjustable accuracy to disguise it so people cant spot cheats from demos. I dont feel bad getting fragged by a cheater, if i know they cheat, but not knowing sucks.

Oh yeah, I heard about one cheat (dont even know if its for ET) … it shoots whenever ur aim is good. Supposed to shoot a few misses after the headshot to keep accuracy down to normal. So its not an aimbot, it just pulls the trigger at the right times. Seems like this would also help the timing thing and make u a faster fragger. How the heck do u catch these lamers???

(SCDS_reyalP) #4

Eh, of course cheats are cheats, and of course they give you and advantage. That’s the whole point of them. That is so obvious that I assumed you were suggesting there was something other than conventional aimbot/wallhack/ballhack/autofire that gave you a time advantage.

(bigstick) #5

mmmm … that is interesting thought … is it possible to fool the server about the timing of ur reactions? what if a lamer changed something in the stuff the client sends to the server … trying to fool server into thinking the client saw something sooner or later than really happened?

If the antilag stuff lets u shoot what u see … even if u see things a little later than other players … then a lamer could try to fool the server into thinking he saw something later than he really did … giving him more time to react. No aimbot … no shootbot … but lamer could still frag faster with that type of cheat :angry: … even though lamer is lagging a little.

(ouroboro) #6

Owned.

(bigstick) #7

ouroboro … :rofl:

(SCDS_reyalP) #8

In general, these things are hard to do, since the server puts very little trust in the client. There have been ‘speedhacks’ in previous games, based on messing with the clients idea of time, however, this shouldn’t work in ET (i did see it in HL2 the other night. GG vavle :/). In etman and shrub, it is also possible to get a significant advantage from controlled warping.

Most likely there are other undiscovered exploits, but trying to guess them out of thin air, without any technical background is unlikely to be very effective.

(ouroboro) #9

hehe, what’s so funny? it’s better than the author of the article! he’s a 160 noob! :bump:

(G0-Gerbil) #10

Reasonable article, but I particularly found the bit on game gear to be ignorant and factually incorrect.
The game does not take the delta from the mouse and multiply it up based on the resolution so it moves the correct number of pixels.
It simply rotates by an angle, which is the same regardless of screenresolution. Doh!

Fortunately it doesn’t change the nature of that part, but it always strikes me as crazy when people assume games like this have any measurements based on pixels - it’s pure maths and the screen merely shows something, it has no basis on the engine itself. Reminds me of an article I saw ages age that claimed that headshots were more likely to happen on lower resolutions because the pixels for collision were bigger! He actually covers something similar but fortunately points out it’s false.

(kat) #11

Unless you want to call having a faster computer or better connection a ‘cheat’

It’s been a whiles since I played on line but I recently got broadband and loaded ET. A mate of mine was showing me round the maps last night and running infront of me as we mooched around. I suddenly noticed something that made me go ‘ahhh, of course…!’. His ping rate was 175 and mine was 50, but he was actually traveling about 25%->35% faster than me, so much so that I couldn’t even bunnyhop and keep up over long distances.

He’s not a ‘tweeker’ of things like network rates and snaps etc… so everything will be on the default settings the games uses. The same can be said of my install. The only difference between the two of us (aside from geographical location) was system power, he’s currently got about 50% more power under the hood than I have.

The point about this is that it can safely be assumed that the speed at which you travel, react etc. from a global point of view (ie. how other people see you react ingame) is based on your systems power and how fast it processes the data it recieves, not necessarily the data travelling up and down the line. I’d certainly agree with the statment about there ‘not being a magic tweek’ to make your gaming experience faster.

I don’t know if this is of any use but I put it together a long time ago (a couple of years in fact… shudders at the thought of so much time passing without noticing it) so I don’t know how correct it is anymore. It’s basically a compilation of what was some ‘classic information’ about network settings for Quake3
http://www.quake3bits.com/htm/articles/network_settings.htm

(G0-Gerbil) #12

Are you sure he wasn’t just sprinting and you were travelling normally?
Speed / location is computed server-side, there fore it can’t vary between clients (apart from strafe jumping which you say he wasn’t doing, and using stamina).

(kat) #13

As far as I can tell he was ‘running’. But I’ve noticed this in Quake3 as well… weapons fire rates are different from person to person presumably becasue of the speed at which data is processed locally and then sent to the server (from which the server must be basing it’s calculations…??).

(G0-Gerbil) #14

I know that the fire rate you see locally can vary - eg you might find the guy next to you firing a batch of ultra quick bullets (faster than the gun can do).
But this is just the server sending a load of data that your computer plays back quickly to ‘catch up’ to real time - on the server side everyone’s guns still only fire as fast as the weapon rate allows.

You have to remember that bar a few circumstances, only the server knows what’s actually going on and processes things based on this.
The client is pretty much just a user interface and a view onto the world - one that can, at times, vary wildly from what is really happening.

(kat) #15

Actually yeah, if you look at it from the other way around… the server being 100% correct all the time then the clients are basically playing ‘catchup’. Tbh though, I’ve lost touch with all of this stuff as I’ve not really played online for about 2 years… :o/

(bigstick) #16

If ur computer is too slow, somethings might fall behind a small amount because the server does not know what u did right away.
Keyboard presses n stuff r supposed to be top priority, but if ur computer is underwater …
but once the server knows u push run then u run same as every1 else.
… except for the weird stuff about 76fps settings helping jumping n things.

(bigstick) #17

Yeah … but if the antilag stuff works like every1 says, then server must trust client to know what client saw when client shoots.

BIG DOOR for lamers to cheat =(

[quote=“SCDS_reyalP”]

In general, these things are hard to do, since the server puts very little trust in the client. There have been ‘speedhacks’ in previous games, based on messing with the clients idea of time, however, this shouldn’t work in ET (i did see it in HL2 the other night. GG vavle :/). In etman and shrub, it is also possible to get a significant advantage from controlled warping.

Most likely there are other undiscovered exploits, but trying to guess them out of thin air, without any technical background is unlikely to be very effective.[/quote]

(SCDS_reyalP) #18

Yes, and pink dragons might fly down and snatch you off to never-never land. The server only trusts the time the client claimed to shoot, and that is only within a very limited range. With some really serious analysis at runtime, you might be able to get some advantage out of manipulating that, but it would be far simpler to just write and aimbot. As I said before, you should understand how it works, rather than making wild guesses.

Kat:
Thats pretty strange. In general, frame rates shouldn’t (and in my experience don’t) make much of a difference in speed when just running around. The running player maxes out at 256 units per second (FWIW, etpro has a speedometer you can turn on, as to some Q3 mods). I suspect your friend was using sprint from time to time or something like that. There may be some anomalies at extreme values, and some rounding artifacts if you are sprint/strafe jumping, but thats about it. There are some FPS issues with the weapons in etmain (and these are real, not just client side illusions).

In any case, enjoy your broadband :smiley:

(kat) #19

In any case, enjoy your broadband

Give me a ‘hell yeah’…!
It’s certainly interesting seeing the difference it makes that’s for sure

(bigstick) #20

Cowboys ride dem dragons! Who needs logic?