AimBots :/

[RMF]

hm there were two on supeR,CTF yesterday: an unnamedplayer (85.29.69.87) and Shinobi (no IP but can get if needed). Both should be banned there now.

[Peter Silie]

agree

[KILLIE THE GREAT]

Wow killie how the h*ll do you even hit anything with that ping .

Delag hitscan bru.

[RMF]

if it'd work for movement and all weaps

[HelloKitty!]

The movement messes me up more than the weapon lag. I get stuck on every single corner when I'm lagging.

[KILLIE THE GREAT]

if it'd work for movement and all weaps

So right, delag sucks for plasma, rockets, anything with slow projectiles

[7]

So right, delag sucks for plasma, rockets, anything with slow projectiles

Why? Projectile weapons lag exactly the same whether you play delagged or not, playing delagged you just experience the projectile lag more because hitscan weapons have no lag at all. If you have problems dodging incoming rockets because of the lag you should set cg_projectilenudge to your ping time.

[Gig]

What are exactly cg_projectilenudge and cl_timenudge? How do they work?

I read here that the second can add an artificial lag to you, and that can set with negative values, and they suggest to set it to a negative value, the half of your average ping...

[7]

cl_timenudge induces artificial lag with positive values and tries to extrapolate/predict the game state with negative values, but it is not a good option when playing delagged because it messes with the timing of hitscan weapons also.

cg_projectilenudge induces artificial lag to (your view of) enemy projectiles, it takes positive values only and is meant for delagged play (it doesn't mess with the position of other players like cl_timenudge does).

The reason for introducing artificial lag is that it 'synchronizes' your view of the game to the actual state of the server if you pick the right amount of lag. If you have 60 ms ping and you don't introduce artificial lag to your view of the game, you'll see other players and projectiles with a 30 ms delay, so rockets (which travel at 900 ups) coming at you are actually 900 * 30 / 1000 = 27 units closer to you than you see them. By setting cl_timenudge 30 (half your ping) or cg_projectilenudge 60 (your ping), enemy rockets actually are where you see them. (If you use cg_projectilenudge 60 this means rockets will seem to spawn 27 units in front of other players' rocket launchers also, but you get used to this quickly.)

You can use negative cl_timenudge values to get a 'lagfree' feeling while moving, but at the expense of never knowing where other players really are, because you're ordering your client to try and predict the future and show it to you. So if you have ping 60 and set cl_timenudge -30 you'll experience movement without lag, but you'll see other players 'skipping' from one position to the next sometimes because the client prediction was wrong.

[Gig]

Thank you for the good explaination...
Just to complete the thing... what happens to your view of enemy rockets if you set a negative cl_timenudge value?

PS: just to know... guys do you really use these options?

[7]

Negative cl_timenudge works the same for rockets as it does for players, so you'll see the rockets where the client thinks they will be. This isn't a big problem for rockets (and other projectiles) though, because they travel in a predictable trajectory at a predictable speed.

The problem with negative cl_timenudge is actually hitting someone at a distance with hitscan weapons like the railgun, more so if he's traveling at high speed (strafing). Your client is trying to predict where the players will be in the number of milliseconds you specify (negatively) with cl_timenudge, and you're shooting at this prediction. Combine this with delagged hitscan weapons and hitting someone almost becomes a question of pure luck, especially at large negative cl_timenudge values.

[RMF]

you're the first to explain it that logicly and clearly, so far everyone i asked was like 'if u set timenudge to -50 it'll cut off 50 of your ping', which everyone should do ofcourse it seemed. I was already wondering why this kinda build-in cheat existed but this explains Thanks

[Falkland]

you're the first to explain it that logicly and clearly, so far everyone i asked was like 'if u set timenudge to -50 it'll cut off 50 of your ping', which everyone should do ofcourse it seemed.

cl_timenudge is unlimited in both negative or positive values in the quake3 engine.

Unlagged has introduced a limit ( its value was clamped between -50 and 50 ) but ioquake3 did better since the limit is hardcoded now between -30 and 30

Actually there was another problem with negative values of cl_timenudge and not unlagged engine : if a client has set cg_smoothclients to 1 and has a negative timenudge , it could happen to see enemies into walls . I remember this kind of effect in OA071.

Unlagged has moved smothclient code into the server code only so I guess there should not be any problem related to this anymore.

[WaspKiller]

cl_timenudge is unlimited in both negative or positive values in the quake3 engine...

I did not know it was unlimited in 1.32c.  Thanks for the info.

In E+ we rarely had a major issue with this as all Clan/Fun War servers must use PB which has a limit (I think of +/- 30) and many Admins further capped this at +/- 10.

Off Topic: Another way players tried to gain an advantage was by enabling "drawNames" which allowed players to easily locate and identify players on fog based maps like Q3Tourney5 or Q3wcp3.  E+ 2.1 beta now prevents players from seeing anyone other than team mates.

[Gig]

Negative cl_timenudge works the same for rockets as it does for players, so you'll see the rockets where the client thinks they will be.

Sorry to annoying you again. Can I have an example? I still don't understand exactly how it works for positive and negative values. If I add an artificial lag, shouldn't I have a worser experience?
Let's try with an example.
A player fires (from point "A") a rocket to me (at point "B"). The moment he shoots is T0 and the moment the rocket reaches me is T200 and cause of ping I normally see its rocket from T60 (at A point) and me being hit from T260 (at B point)....
As you said, if I set cl_timenudge 30, at T60 I start seeing the rocket, but at A+X (X being the space the rocket travels in 60 ms.. In our example, you told 27 units ahead A point, right?) instead of A point. So I see it reach point B at T200 instead of T260... right? But the game will show me being injuried starting from T260 anyway, right?

So it seems to substract articifial lag, not to add it... :-/
What if I set this negative? At T60 where will I see the rocket? When will I see it reach B point?

Off Topic: Another way players tried to gain an advantage was by enabling "drawNames" which allowed players to easily locate and identify players on fog based maps like Q3Tourney5 or Q3wcp3.  E+ 2.1 beta now prevents players from seeing anyone other than team mates.

"Drawnames"? What option is it exactly? I quickly searched in menu, and in commands beginning with cg_draw or r_draw, but I didn't find it (in baseoa, didn't test on E+).
Does it enable and disable the name of the player you are aiming at? If everyone have it active (as default), everyone will see the names in the fog and everyone will be in the same situation (and the names appear only after a while you are already targeting someone, right?). Completely remove the names of your enemies is not the maximum, IMHO.... I like to know who I am shooting at...

[7]

Can I have an example? I still don't understand exactly how it works for positive and negative values. If I add an artificial lag, shouldn't I have a worser experience?

If you add artificial lag you'll experience more movement lag for your part, but your display lag is gone. With ping 60 it takes 30 ms to reach the server and 30 ms back to your client again, so without artificial lag you'll experience a 30 ms delay in your movement and every moving object you see on your monitor has a 30 ms delay also. This means that if a projectile hits you without artificial lag, you'll experience the damage 30 ms before you actually see the projectile hitting you on your monitor (and for higher pings it gets worse of course).

By adding 30 ms artificial lag you'll experience a 60 ms delay in your movement, but no delay for moving objects on your monitor. You'll experience the projectile damage when you actually see it hitting you. This makes avoiding enemy projectiles easier, because movement lag is easier to handle than dodging lagging rockets.

With negative timenudge you try to solve the lag problem in a totally different way by telling the client to predict the future of the game 30 ms ahead. This means you won't experience any movement delay nor any display delay. This seems wonderful, but because players aren't moving in predictable patterns the client is often wrong in predicting player locations, so you'll see players in different positions from where they really are (and shoot nice big holes in the air instead of in the players). The client will predict the position of projectiles perfectly because projectiles do move in a predictable way (so you'll be able to dodge rockets with the right amount of negative timenudge).

[Gig]

This means that if a projectile hits you without artificial lag, you'll experience the damage 30 ms before you actually see the projectile hitting you on your monitor (and for higher pings it gets worse of course).

But I suppose that the server will record my damage 30ms before i see te projectile hitting me... then it will inform my client, that will get that information 30ms later, more or less exactly when I will see the projectile hit me, isn't so?
Of course, in that 30ms, I cannot do anything to avoid the damage...

The core of the thing, I suppose, is that switching from positive to negative values has more or less the same behavior for non-hitscan projectiles, while changes a lot the way it handles movement of the players... right?

[7]

But I suppose that the server will record my damage 30ms before i see te projectile hitting me... then it will inform my client, that will get that information 30ms later, more or less exactly when I will see the projectile hit me, isn't so?
Of course, in that 30ms, I cannot do anything to avoid the damage...

Exactly, only this isn't a big issue with low pings, but if you'd have ping 200 the 1/10 of a second "dead time" would be really noticeable and quite annoying. Timenudge is what pushlatency was in earlier versions of quake: a technology to take away some of the advantage of LPBs over HPBs.

The core of the thing, I suppose, is that switching from positive to negative values has more or less the same behavior for non-hitscan projectiles, while changes a lot the way it handles movement of the players... right?

Not quite, aiming projectiles is about the same for positive and negative timenudge values, but with positive values there is an (added) delay between the moment you press fire and the moment your weapon really fires, while there is no such delay at all with negative timenudge values (even the real lag is removed).

Aiming projectiles with projectilenudge is always exactly the same as aiming with timenudge 0 because projectilenudge only influences enemy projectiles and not the player positions (so you can still aim straight at them with delagged hitscan weapons).

edit:
I see I got your question wrong. Yes, other players' projectiles seem to behave the same way for negative and positive timenudge values (and even for projectilenudge values / 2), the differences between the different technologies are much more noticeable in where you see the other players (and in the movement lag you experience of course).

[Gig]

Okay. I really want to thank you for your helpfulness. I wonder if you can summarize everything we talked here to have a good "help page" about these variables, since it seems they are not well covered on online documentation.

I'm not sure what will be the best page to talk about them... maybe DO NOT LINK[/b]) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/Tweak]this one (Tweak)? Now there is simply a short line about that:
/cl_timenudge 0 <- Leave at 0 for less lag and less trouble (default 0).
It would be nice to create a section in that page dedicated to lag-related variables, like delag (it seems to me that there are more variables other than \g_delag, isn't so?)... and, more important, timenudge and projectilenudge.... a technical explaination of how they work, an example of what you experience (good things and bad things... with hitscan weapons, non-hitscan weapons, movement, moving platforms...), how they interfere each other, which values you should use.... the various things you explained here, put toghether...
Do you think you can do it?

[7]

Well, this is about as far as my knowledge goes 

I for instance do not know what the technology behind cg_projectilenudge actually is, so I can't write technical explanations about how it works. I suspect it's prediction for projectiles (a bit like negative timenudge) because I can't feel it adding any movement lag and I occasionally see errors like stuck rockets, but I just don't know for sure.

I could make a start though, I'll see what I can do in the coming weekend.

[Gig]

There is no need to be excessively verbose in technical explaination (focus on practical explaination would be better)... just something more that "it cuts down your ping" as we can read around the web...
I meant, for example, your sentence about it synchronizing your view with your lag on the server...

Anyway, if someone wants add more technical explainations (for example... Sago, are you out there? ), he's welcome...

[7]

Hmm, my advice in few centences:

1) Learn to play online with cl_timenudge set to 0 and don't listen to all the pro advice. There will be ever more delagged servers around, and if you learn to play with cl_timenudge you'll have to relearn moving without bumping into walls and aiming projectile (non-hitscan) weapons when you do set cl_timenudge to 0 to get the delagged hitscan detection to work 100% for you.

2) Set cg_delag to 1 so all your hitscan weapons will be delagged on delagged servers and you don't have to lead them anymore but you can aim straight at your target instead.

3) Set cg_projectilenudge to your average ping time on the server you're playing on. This will 'delag' your view of enemy projectiles like rockets and shows you your real window of opportunity to avoid them.

4) When, after years of practice, you're an absolute ace with delagged hitscan weapons and you can sense that the server's delagged algorithm is misjudging your ping time by a few milliseconds (which is very unlikely), adjust those few milliseconds with cg_cmdtimenudge (not cl_timenudge).

[Gig]

Okay, this part seems very nice as a closure: after the explainations previously given, we suggest what to do...

[7]

Hi, just posting to tell you I'm still on it, I had a hard disk crash last Saturday (it overheated due to the heatwave ) and I found the time to revive my system just last night. I've installed a 64-bit linux now (Fedora 13) and I'm playing around with the x86_64 OA client a bit. It looks like I'm able to get stable 333 fps on my old GeForce 7600 with it (except on oasago2 where the frame rate drops to 300 fps)

[Gig]

Well, for me it's hard to get 50 fps... ^_^
Anyway, take your time... when you are ready, I'm here (but I will be on holiday from the end of the next week)...