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| Pollyanna 2101th Post
 
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
    
    
    
    
    
|  "Re(2):Screenshots." , posted Sat 9 Dec 07:44
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I don't really care though, since online fighting games are shit until they can offer the exact same response that a normal offline game has.
The only value this holds is as an existant console version for a game that has none (PSP doesn't really count). For that it really needs no extras or upgrades or hype.
I won't argue if Tekken is worth getting excited about or not, but I will argue that online fighters can offer the same response as a normal offline game.
Games will always be dependant on the "other end" not screwing you up, but as long as you work within your limitations, you should get a close enough game with Xbox live. I mean, of course, if you're playing against a guy with a shitty connection in Djibouti, you'll have a problem, but it's not realistic to say "if I can't play against everyone in the world perfectly, then the whole system is rotten!" I've had a very good experience playing fighters online, excluding using emulators (which isn't worth complaining about, since they're free and mostly illegal).
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| Pollyanna 2104th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(3):Screenshots." , posted Sat 9 Dec 10:57
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You always end up with people clamoring to have the game online when they don't know how much work would go into doing so and still have it not be the same. There are moves in VF you couldn't even DO unless it was sheer luck if you made it playable online.
That sounds a bit snotty, you know. Like "You're just making idiotic demands when you don't know what you're talking about."
I mean, really, what's so different about Tekken and Soul Calibur that makes them completely unviable when you can play DOA online perfectly in most cases? It is an issue with PS2 and maybe still with PS3, because they would have to set up their own servers and it might not be financially viable. It's also true that there will be many matches that won't accurately reproduce the arcade/home experience due to server issues, but those matches can be easily avoided.
I can accept that it isn't financially viable to do an online version or that it's more trouble than it's worth, but I don't believe that it isn't technically possible. I can't speak for Soul Calibur, but I've played VF4, DOA4 and Tekken 5 extensively enough to understand things well enough to pass the "you just don't get it" explanation. I can see that there are some precise things in VF that would require a nice connection, but to say that you couldn't do it is an exaggeration.
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| hikarutilmitt 350th Post
Silver Customer
| "Re(4):Screenshots." , posted Sat 9 Dec 11:32
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I mean, really, what's so different about Tekken and Soul Calibur that makes them completely unviable when you can play DOA online perfectly in most cases? It is an issue with PS2 and maybe still with PS3, because they would have to set up their own servers and it might not be financially viable. It's also true that there will be many matches that won't accurately reproduce the arcade/home experience due to server issues, but those matches can be easily avoided.
I can accept that it isn't financially viable to do an online version or that it's more trouble than it's worth, but I don't believe that it isn't technically possible. I can't speak for Soul Calibur, but I've played VF4, DOA4 and Tekken 5 extensively enough to understand things well enough to pass the "you just don't get it" explanation. I can see that there are some precise things in VF that would require a nice connection, but to say that you couldn't do it is an exaggeration.
My main point, at least with VF, is that it's a matter of PHYSICS that you couldn't have it be a 1-to-1 copy of playing a person right by you. I've even gone as far as to try an IP connect to someone online with something like MAME and the best ping I've ever gotten to a normal server EVER was still above 40ms. That's more than a frame, likely 2 or 3 since the latency won't stay perfectly the same, per second that you're losing with playing online. One of Akira's moves REQUIRES a single frame to be able to execute it properly and you'd be asking people to simply not us that move at all during an online match.
Now, I realize that my saying all of this may sound or even BE a bit "snotty" but you cannot deny physics in this situation wouldn't allow a properly played game online. The only reasons games like Mortal Kombat and DOA work at all online is because they actually have input delays (FAR more the former than the latter) built into their engine so that it's either not noticeable or it's something that can simply be coped with. When you get to the point with a game like Tekken or VF or even SC where you're actually counting the frames of move execution to determine the situation you're in and the plan of attack, your options in various situations change almost completely due to lag.
When you can get a match of SSF2T going online without syncing issues the input lag causes enough problems, but it also changes the game drastically. Strategies that wouldn't fly with even inexperienced players suddenly become strategies that you almost have to use to win.
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| Pollyanna 2105th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(5):Screenshots." , posted Sat 9 Dec 11:51
I totally see what you're saying, and you're right, but my question is: can you really use MAME as an example for this? Not only is it an emulator, but you're not working with games that are built for this. Hell, you're not even working with something legal.
I can see that getting a game to work like that consistantly would be a tremendous challenge, and from the perspective of the creators "not worth the effort", but I would say "impractical" before "impossible" based on the principle of "you don't know until you try". By the same token, though, I don't suppose I can say it will work without having seen it work myself.
I've heard mixed news about VF5 being online or not, I wonder what will happen. It's a shame if the series will be hurt by this.
How would you feel about a modified version of VF/Tekken that would play slightly differently online, if you could choose to apply these changes or not to the home version? To me, if online play is impractical or impossible as is, this would be a small sacrifice to make.
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| Gojira 2087th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(3):Screenshots." , posted Sat 9 Dec 18:16
I know this conversation has gone on without me, but anyway.
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I won't argue if Tekken is worth getting excited about or not, but I will argue that online fighters can offer the same response as a normal offline game.
Games will always be dependant on the "other end" not screwing you up, but as long as you work within your limitations, you should get a close enough game with Xbox live. I mean, of course, if you're playing against a guy with a shitty connection in Djibouti, you'll have a problem, but it's not realistic to say "if I can't play against everyone in the world perfectly, then the whole system is rotten!" I've had a very good experience playing fighters online, excluding using emulators (which isn't worth complaining about, since they're free and mostly illegal).
I've played DR on PSP over a direct connection with the other guy sitting 5 feet away from me, and even with a 0.1 second lag it was enough to screw up my timing a lot. I couldn't tech, I couldn't JF, couldn't time an evade, couldn't get combos or juggles to connect. Online is practically guaranteed to be worse than that. It really doesn't matter whether the other guy is nextdoor or somewhere in Antarctica; lagging just messes up my game.
The reason I think DoA has worked online is just because it has very few instances requiring precise timing. The worst it can be when you add a little bit of lag time to it is a guessing game, and to some people that's all it was to begin with anyway. Even so, there is still some dissent in the DoA community about online play, especially when it comes to tournaments.
But this applies mostly for serious players. Casual players could enjoy a game even if their hair was on fire, so online lag isn't going to ruin the experience much. For me though, I take it too seriously. Can't help it.
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| Pollyanna 2106th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(4):Screenshots." , posted Sat 9 Dec 18:36
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even with a 0.1 second lag it was enough to screw up my timing a lot.
You know, I was getting kind of irritated with this conversation, because I was saying "how do you know it's impossible?" and just getting "it's impossible", but this really put things into perspective for me.
I can't tell if there's a .1 second lag. My brain can't even register it. I guess you guys are Newtypes or something, but the point here is that you (and I assume other hardcore players) are acting on a completely different level than me. You've got better hardware.
I don't know what kind of online experience the PS3 can provide, but the chance of it having less than .1 second lag is pretty damned unlikely. It's quite possible that an oldtype like me could play and not notice any issue at all, thinking it's as good as 100%, when it's really 99 and that 1% makes all the difference in the world.
However, I still think that 99% is good enough to justify an online mode. Most players, meaning most consumers won't be able to tell the difference. Being able to play online is a -huge- selling point for me. Truly hardcore gamers can still find their place in arcades, as evidentally the only people that will be playing the online version can't play the game on their level to begin with.
I can certainly understand not playing a game if you can't play to your fullest. I won't play with a crappy controller and I imagine a flawed internet connection would cause the same level of irritation. However, I don't think "All or nothing" and "If I can't have fun, neither should you" are good attitudes for online gaming as a whole.
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| hikarutilmitt 352th Post
Silver Customer
| "Re(8):Screenshots." , posted Sun 10 Dec 02:22
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But... Isn't Virtua Fighter alreay online ? The arcade version ?
That's what I thought, too...but Sega has been very iffy about a home online version being (properly) possible. I don't understand the technology behind their arcade thing, so I don't know if that changes the argument or not.
It is? I thought VF5 just uploads matches that can be watched over VFnet with some funky automated commentary, but the matches themselves are fought by two players at the same machine.
Yeah, the VF.net stuff is for matches, buying items and the like. The closest thing to the machines being "online" is that the typical VS City cabinet is connected to a small section of the machines right in that arcade. They don't use a typical network like the internet connection for it AFAIK, it's all just one "hardwired" connection to each of the machines in that arcade. If there is any lag at all, it is most certainly not enough to ruin the game, but even that is possible doing things like using MAME over a basic LAN where you can get a 0ms ping time.
Ad hoc networking on the PSP introduces lag even when you're right by someone because there is extra processing time involved with a wireless ad hoc connection AND it's a slower connection standard than a regular wired LAN. I mean, at least it's there for multiplayer and all and there isn't a LOT of lag like if you played a game over infrastructure (were there any...) but it still makes fighting games difficult to play beyond a casual experience. This is one of the reasons I won't touch fighting games on the PSP unless I want it for the single-player aspect.
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| Baines
178th Post
Regular Customer
| "Re(5):Screenshots." , posted Sun 10 Dec 08:34
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I can't tell if there's a .1 second lag. My brain can't even register it.
You don't have to be superhuman. You don't even have to "register" it for it to throw off your action.
Hrm.. Would it help to think of a dance game with a limited "hit" window on each step? Then think of what happens if the steps are slightly out of sync with the beat? A frame-specific fighter with lag is worse than that, because you can only go so far accounting for the differences.
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I don't know what kind of online experience the PS3 can provide, but the chance of it having less than .1 second lag is pretty damned unlikely.
As said, it is a physics issue. The speed of light isn't infinite. In a medium it is even slower than in a vaccuum. Even in perfect conditions it takes time to travel some distance. Then add in the other time sinks, as information is packaged, routed, processed, sent possibly along zigzagging paths, etc.
Hardware can improve things (or hurt them), but there will always be some delay. When you consider thousands of miles and unknown processing steps versus a program that requires accurate information delivered at fractions of a second, that's when you have problems.
You can do online fighters, but they need to be lag tolerant. For VF, that would require changing the game itself.
Consider the example of FPS. Over the years, they've had varying methods of tolerance built into their designs. At first, they had extremely primative hit boxes, more like hit cylinders/circles. Even under normal gameplay, you only had to be in the general vicinity to hit a target. This was eased further by intentionally designing weapons that were either slow, area effect, or weak (the last so that a player would be less obsessed if they missed a shot that did 2% damage versus a shot that did 20%). The code for net play was also designed to predict player actions. If you were in the air, the game knew where you were going. If you were running on the ground, it assumed you would keep running. Etc. And plenty more has been done, because while net speeds have improved, the games themselves have been designed to demand faster speeds.
You could design a fighter with such things in mind. (Supposedly DOA does take some measures in account besides just input delay and loose play windows.)
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| Time Mage 2479th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(5):Screenshots." , posted Sun 10 Dec 08:43
I think you are wrong here:
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My main point, at least with VF, is that it's a matter of PHYSICS that you couldn't have it be a 1-to-1 copy of playing a person right by you. I've even gone as far as to try an IP connect to someone online with something like MAME and the best ping I've ever gotten to a normal server EVER was still above 40ms. That's more than a frame, likely 2 or 3 since the latency won't stay perfectly the same, per second that you're losing with playing online. One of Akira's moves REQUIRES a single frame to be able to execute it properly and you'd be asking people to simply not us that move at all during an online match.
Yeah, Akira's "knee" needs to press two buttons with a separation of 1 frame from each other. But that ISN'T affected by latency at all! The latency happens between your inputs and what you see onscreen, but if, let's say, there's a latency of 50 ms and you press two buttons with a separation of 1 frame between them, you'll see the results onscreen 50 ms later, but the information of those button presses travels together, conserving the time delay between them. Maybe, in very unstable connections, the inputs may separate themselves since the latency varies a lot, but with an almost constant latency, that shouldn't be an issue.
Also:
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I can't tell if there's a .1 second lag. My brain can't even register it. I guess you guys are Newtypes or something, but the point here is that you (and I assume other hardcore players) are acting on a completely different level than me. You've got better hardware.
Believe it or not, you can tell. 0.1 s lag is 100 ms lag, which is a lot. In a 2D fighting game, you won't do a single wakeup shoryuken-like move in time with such lag, unlss you are already accustomed and delay yourself instinctively. But, for someone that usually plays offline, that is a lot.
Why is lag bad? Because there's a delay between what you see onscreen and what you input, so, instead of reacting to the information provided by the screen, you have to ignore it and rely on pure timing (in the case of combos) or intuition (in the case of reacting to something) or a mix of both in most cases.
In games like VF, in which you have little leniency to react against your opponent's moves, not being able to respond to the onscreen information means that much, much more moves would become totally safe on block or on hit, since you just can't react in time. And that would change the entire game (at an advanced enough level, of course, I doubt it would affect my crappy VF4 skills.)
I'm the leading man. You know what they say abut the leading man? He NEVER dies.
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| hikarutilmitt 353th Post
Silver Customer
| "Re(6):Screenshots." , posted Sun 10 Dec 09:23
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Yeah, Akira's "knee" needs to press two buttons with a separation of 1 frame from each other. But that ISN'T affected by latency at all! The latency happens between your inputs and what you see onscreen, but if, let's say, there's a latency of 50 ms and you press two buttons with a separation of 1 frame between them, you'll see the results onscreen 50 ms later, but the information of those button presses travels together, conserving the time delay between them. Maybe, in very unstable connections, the inputs may separate themselves since the latency varies a lot, but with an almost constant latency, that shouldn't be an issue.
It actually affects both in a real-world situation. The more lag there is the longer you have to stretch your commands. Even something quick and simple like a fireball motion can become a long and drawn-out motion when you have to take lag into account. It's a matter of what information goes into the packets each keyframe to maintain syncing. That's why you can, say, send a macro for a move that sends the commands nearly instantly that makes it happen easier and with the 50ms of lag for the more instead of having to employ those 50ms to making the command work. The entire command is sent so swiftly by the macro that it all goes in a single frame sent by the network.
Again, playing VF2 online for the PC causes all sorts of problems to show up, even with a good ping. I can do the single-frame knee for Akira reliably enough to use it in combos when I feel I can, but it was nearly impossible to do it online thanks to input latency.
Basically, with online play and lag, it's 6 of one and half a dozen of the other.
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