BZ2 1.3.6.4z13 - Open beta & testing

[Zero Angel]

Don't know where your getting your information from, but it seems your source is flawed or hasnt played enough public strats to get a good handle on the amount of people who do this. I dont know if you know this, but competitive players are the ones who would be most annoyed by people purposely adding lag/packet loss to give themselves an advantage. Unlike many of the other looked-down-upon things (e.g. camping empties, going inside buildings), using lag like this is especially looked down upon because it's more premeditated than 'heat of the moment'.

Among the over 100 different people i've played with in my bz2 'career' (probably 200 or 300, but I would only be able to name 100 people if I had to), I can say with confidence that i've only known maybe 2 people who I have ever suspected of doing so and one of them doesnt play BZ2 anymore.

Don't get me wrong. It's not a bad thing to aim for. I'm just worried about side-effects. Side effects effect even those with 'clean hands' as you say. If you can pull it off without side-effects then it would be a good thing, but using an ideal setting would probably take a few revisions and tests to improve the algorithm which is why i'm surprised you decided to implement it so far into the 1.3.6.4 beta.

[barbed_wire83]

I just installed the z13 patch, and am having a REALLY bad problem. My antenna for Scion messed up bad. First I was kicked out of it for some odd reason, appeared right next to it. After that, every time I tried to use it, it was like I permanently had my mouse button held down over the minimap while in it. I couldn't command with it. Wanted to let you guys know about this, it really messes with my command game, and probably others.

[yeah]

There are points to both sides, giving players more information regarding the networking connection and identifying a problematic connection is a good thing.

However if in practical terms this leads to constantly excluding players that's not a good thing at all. The community is too small that it can easily lose players or afford to live without cross continental games.

[Red Spot]

Among the over 100 different people i've played with in my bz2 'career' (probably 200 or 300, but I would only be able to name 100 people if I had to), I can say with confidence that i've only known maybe 2 people who I have ever suspected of doing so and one of them doesnt play BZ2 anymore.

I'm not an active player any more, and that has been so for quite some time now. Yet I know at least 3 that can easilly be confirmed. I honostly even wanted to use a number slightly higher than 3. Anyway, you play regularly with those 3 and should know very well about the actions of at least 2 of those 3, and both are (fairly) active player, afaik.
Perhaps you would also like to name KP or Muffin, or might even be reffering to them with the 2 you mention. Even if you would, both of those 'extremes' have been caused by behaviour they where presented with and seemingly had an urge to belong by griefing themselves but made the mistake of griefing within that particular group, instead of players outside that group.

[Zero Angel]

Among the over 100 different people i've played with in my bz2 'career' (probably 200 or 300, but I would only be able to name 100 people if I had to), I can say with confidence that i've only known maybe 2 people who I have ever suspected of doing so and one of them doesnt play BZ2 anymore.

I'm not an active player any more, and that has been so for quite some time now. Yet I know at least 3 that can easilly be confirmed. I honostly even wanted to use a number slightly higher than 3. Anyway, you play regularly with those 3 and should know very well about the actions of at least 2 of those 3, and both are (fairly) active player, afaik.
Perhaps you would also like to name KP or Muffin, or might even be reffering to them with the 2 you mention. Even if you would, both of those 'extremes' have been caused by behaviour they where presented with and seemingly had an urge to belong by griefing themselves but made the mistake of griefing within that particular group, instead of players outside that group.

Well, KP definitely does memory hacking on (his own) hosted games to give himself a scrap cheat (but has warned others about it) but he doesnt play very actively nor is he very good. Muff, its hard to say, i've actually not played in many games with him, only enough to get the general impression that he's a reasonably skilled player.

One was a 1.2 player named Muffin (different from today's muffin) who spelled his name out of symbols and had the worst ghosting I ever seen (no longer active). And the other one is an active player (GEL member) who knows who he is. I first started playing bz2 on 28.8k (back in 2001) so my sensitivity to natural lag is low, I don't accuse people very readily.

[MrTwosheds]

Ghosting was a different issue altogether I believe, quite easy for anyone to do in 1.2 if they knew what it was, and a lot of people would be doing it anyway without knowing it.
Something to do with an accumulating error when a vehicle exceeded its supposed max velocity, and the client actually drawing the ship where it though it should be rather than where it actually was...keep going as fast as you can, drive round and round your base as you build, than ghost attack as a surprise pair of disembodied miniguns while the enemy try to shoot 50m behind you.

[Juggernaut]

This happens on occasion (Notice white ISDF scout in shell):

[Zero Angel]

Ghosting was a different issue altogether I believe, quite easy for anyone to do in 1.2 if they knew what it was, and a lot of people would be doing it anyway without knowing it.
Something to do with an accumulating error when a vehicle exceeded its supposed max velocity, and the client actually drawing the ship where it though it should be rather than where it actually was...keep going as fast as you can, drive round and round your base as you build, than ghost attack as a surprise pair of disembodied miniguns while the enemy try to shoot 50m behind you.

yeah. Pretty much everyone ghosted when travelling at max speeds, it was the side effect of 'fast-running' and actually not as bad as one would think since most people ghosted equally and hitting a ghost who is escaping is just a matter of predicting their actual location based on the location of their TLI and how long they've been ghosting for, it became essential to constantly mash the 't' key to try and catch anyone ghosting into your location. Old Muffin's ghosting though was the most ridiculous that I've ever seen. He could have flown right over you and is now directly above you and hovering you down by the time you seen his physical image start to appear on the horizon. And if you did manage to target him, that TLI indicator would be so loooong. That was the only person whose ghosting genuinely angered me. Don't know how he did it.

This happens on occasion (Notice white ISDF scout in shell):

Juggz can you try to narrow it down? Like does it happen only after a game has been played, only if a game has been not played yet, etc.

[Red Devil]

that's been (correction) addressed in the private build.

[GSH]

Nope, nobody's ever given me a solid repro case for why ships sometimes go white in the lobby. A special private-only build made it more common for one tester, but on my box, that bug knows it'll be squashed if it appears. So it doesn't. :(

Juggernaut - what video card & OS are you running? i.e. AMD/Nvidia/Intel GPU?

-- GSH

[Juggernaut]

The white scout issue is intermittent. It usually happens when I 1st join a game (about 40% of the time). I cannot duplicate the issue if I host. I joined snakes game today, and the scout was white. We finished our game, then the problem disappeared as we waited for the next game. It's a very minor problem obviously, but I've noticed this started occurring a few patches ago.

My gaming PC specs are listed in my sig (latest drivers, happened with older drivers as well)

Also, other strat players are reporting the following issues in z13:
1.)2s freeze after modding ships just as you exit the terminal
2.)Freezing of your ships mobility if you are too close to a build in progress (extractor in field, factory or any object that is being built or morphed), often we will freeze passing closely to an extractor as the scav is deploying (getting stuck in the object as it is morphing into a complete build, resulting in death as our opponent pummels our stuck ship).
3.)lag / resynchs if players with higher pings in game (200 plus). We did not have this problem in z6. Even with good low pings, z13 seems to resync noticeably more than z6.
4.)Ping limit of 750 is too low. People's connections often spike (often to alt/tab). Causing the server to more frequently autokick, which leads to lag - resychs as they rejoin.

Also take note of a prior post I made in the z13 alpha thread (issues I find with z13):

I'm just getting around to mentioning some recent findings.

Message Chat Blurry -> seems like you're already working on this. More opaque would solve that one.

Vsync ON and TripleBuffer ON was definitely causing the mouse input lag I was complaining about earlier (Mostly vsync, trip buff causes some lag). Confirmed with Commando, his description: "feels like you are aiming on ice"

Would it be possible to replace the non working command: /gson /gsoff to a raknet equivalent: /rakneton /raknetoff ?

It would be very helpful to add an 'unban' button to the left or above the Ban button in shell. Myself and others have banned by mistake. Many do not know where to go to remove the ban from: ... My Documents\My Games\Battlezone II\UserBannedList.ini

Being able to change server message (and or game title) while in game would also be VERY helpful.

in game player list only displays 7 out of 10 players above in game chat window (See ZA's code/fix .. it works in VSR).

sensitivity x and y mouse axis while in ship are not equal (y axis, pitch higher than x) Although X&Y do feel equal while aiming/sniping on foot.
Specs:
Windows 8 Pro 64bit
i5 3570K @4.5Ghz
16GB DDR3-1600 Corsair RAM
MSI Z77A-G41 Mobo
500GB WD Black SATA 7200rpm
ASUS GTX660 OC 2GB DDR5
ASUS Xonar DGX PCIe Sound Card
Sennheiser HD518 Headphones
TW Cable Internet - 35Mb/6Mb
Motorolla SB6141 Modem

[GSH]

in game player list only displays 7 out of 10 players above in game chat window (See ZA's code/fix .. it works in VSR).

Any proposed fix must work in 640x480 w/o cutting off other UI elements. I'm not yet willing to cut support for that resolution.

And, the white ships might be correlated w/ Nvidia cards. Problem is, only Nvidia card I've got access to right now is a GeForce 8400GS on a Athlon64x2 WinXP box, and that card appears to work fine for me.

-- GSH

[Red Devil]

i just tried that and the text is still unreadable against a light background/sky, plus it overlaps the target window and the wireframe a bit.

here's one version i've come up with recently. i removed the score table in this one since it's already available on the escape screen, plus made the chat non-transparent and moved and adjusted the size of the chat/messages box so it doesn't cover anything and moved the wireframe over a bit so it doesn't overlap the sniper scope, but the deployed wireframe is clipped on the right.

i made the chat/messages section larger to accommodate the timestamp if used, but it's probably too big now.

640x480 doesn't leave you much room to work with.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/987 ... -48-62.jpg

i'll post more pics of different versions.

[Zero Angel]

i just tried that and the text is still unreadable against a light background/sky, plus it overlaps the target window and the wireframe a bit.

Yeah. I removed the post because I realize that the cfg was made for 1.6.2 and looks different and less readable in 1.6.4

[Commando]

The white scout bug occurs 100% of the time for me in a private z13 build. It occurs before you even launch a game. There are two things that fix it.

1. If Specular Highlights are "Enabled", setting lights to "None" fixes it.
2. Outright disabling Specular Highlights also fixes it, no matter what lights are set to.