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The time between click and reaction is noticeably huge in multiplayer games, even if u just play vs one AI.


thankforpieOfficial
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its instant in single player, but pretty slow in multiplayer, even if theres just one AI and tiny map

Multiplayer:

image.gif.fa7a70d78d3bdca126c6d7f7c3b85fd8.gif

Singleplayer:

image.gif.b3e0de36e097e562473bd354e73ed4e3.gif

(by the way, the difference is actually much bigger than on the recorded files, i wasnt able to capture the exact difference, cus the soft recorded at framerate 30-60). But yeah the difference from the perspective of a player is huge. And the better PC&monitor player has, the bigger the difference. Players wont feel it if they play both single player and multiplayer at 60fps and 60 refresh rate max, at least not that much.

 

First I thought its something with my setup, but i checked all settings and my pc as well and it doesnt seem to be the case. I have better hardware and network than is required for this game (easily getting 300fps). As for network i have 600mb download, 150mb upload and 4ms ping to servers in the same city as me.

It's such a letdown in many ways. Last game I played was League of Legends, ultra-competitive. And the INSTANT reaction time was amazing in it. I didn't even know I liked it that much until i played 0ad multiplayer again and realized how much not having that instant reaction frustrates me. And to be honest competitiveness is the main reason why multiplayer is so popular, regardless of the game that is played.

I'm wondering if there are any plans to fix reaction time or general lag?

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According to the game clock it takes a little bit more than one second for units to react after i click, in multiplayer. One second and few miliseconds.

BTW formatting broke in my original post bcuz of spoiler tags and i wasnt able to edit it

Edited by thankforpieOfficial
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35 minutes ago, vladislavbelov said:

How did you measure the difference?

Usually unit lag = frameTime (~16.6ms) + simulationTurnDuration (200ms).

just by eye. when second changed in game clock, i clicked. before units reacted, another second passed.

another recording, its possibly more visible here:

Edited by thankforpieOfficial
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30 minutes ago, Gurken Khan said:

There's also a noticeable delay between clicking and UI reaction. I only play single player on turtle speed, when I give an order like building a structure or producing units I always have to wait a moment to get the visual confirmation.

The effect is more pronounced in slower simulation rates because commands only take effect the next turn. In single player that is. Which might explain why single player is better in the original post.

The delay is 4 turns in multiplayer which should be a second or so.

 

tl:dr; Commands take effect 1 turn later in singleplayer, and 4 turns later in multiplayer.

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3 minutes ago, smiley said:

The effect is more pronounced in slower simulation rates because commands only take effect the next turn. In single player that is. Which might explain why single player is better in the original post.

The delay is 4 turns in multiplayer which should be a second or so.

They have 200ms turn too now wraitiinchanged it

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Correct, the 'turn length' was 200ms in SP / 500 ms in MP, with command delay set to 'next turn' in SP (which can range 400-200 ms). I've changed it to 200ms everywhere, but the command delay is 3 in MP, which results in 1000-800ms actual delay I believe.

One thing to note is that the graphics are always 'one turn behind' the game simulation, as we need to know what happens between turns N and N+1 to render turn N. So even though SP actions take place on 'next turn', that's at best 201ms away.

Lowering the command delay would be possible if we had better lag mitigation, and could adjust on-the-fly, but works remains to be done here.

Adjusting the 'turn length' requires optimising the game.

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I enjoyed reading more about the recent changes on that matter. The commercial games employ techniques to mask the actual command delay, even though the actual delay also can be lower as wraitii described it. You would usually start animating the units immediately and then smoothe their visual position into the actual one. We could probably do something like that.

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I think the best comparison for us is Age of Empires 2, I believe DE also uses a turn-rate with command-delay system. However, I believe they use adaptable and lower turn-rate / command-delay, so you usually don't notice it in normal games. If you end up in a situation where you have lag however, there is a noticeable delay between a click and the corresponding action happening.

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