DUST Search - What causes the blue shield, and what is the reccommended network bandwidth.

Orenji Jiji wrote:

Great post, Garret, only one nitpick.

Garrett Blacknova wrote:

If you fire, and on your screen, you have a clear shot, but before the server received your notification that you pulled the trigger, the enemy's movement data is transmitted telling the server that they're already around the corner. Because the server sees you shooting at nothing instead of the enemy, your shots won't connect.

I had this happen with a camper, who did not move at all -- sitting in a corner, scoped in. I lined up for the execution, went into ADS on my SMG and let it rip. I've spat full SMG mag locally and then *had to reload*, the game was running smoothly and I monitored the connection -- no breakups, the ping was always below 40ms. I had no stops, moonwalking, glitching, tearing -- nothing -- everything looked fine on my end. My squad member confirmed location and lack of movement of my prey.

Then no damage registered, I've raged over comms and had my squad tell me that I am not firing at all! I pondered this while I reloaded. Five seconds later my red was already aware of us and I shot him dead, just as he turned back to me and damage started registering again. My squad mates did not have this problem at and one of them was on the same connection. Reiterating: they were getting and dealing damage throughout that weird scene, but from/to other targets. This includes the person sharing my connection. It looked like the server just dropped my actions for a small amount of time, while it informed me about everything around me no problem.

Yeah, I know that UDP and routing is complicated, I know you will always blame local WiFi first, but it's moot. The server is buggy. CCP should probably get external parties with experience to investigate, if they haven't already.


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Garrett Blacknova Codex Troopers 2008	Posted - 2013.03.13 10:52:00 - [1] - Quote Don Von Hulio wrote: What causes the blue shield glitch. Is it my network? Their network? The server? The simple answer to this is... Is it your network? Yes. Is it theirs? No. Is it the server? Yes. The best guess so far is that the game runs server-side hit detection. This means that when you shoot, your facing and the relevant weapon data is transmitted to the server, and it calculates whether or not you hit anything based on the locations of targets ACCORDING TO THE SERVER. If you fire, and on your screen, you have a clear shot, but before the server received your notification that you pulled the trigger, the enemy's movement data is transmitted telling the server that they're already around the corner. Because the server sees you shooting at nothing instead of the enemy, your shots won't connect. MOST of the considerations are based around your connection to the server. As long as your download is above 1.5Mbps, and upload is at least 0.5Mpbs, you're USUALLY fine for those considerations. Higher is better, but not a major concern. The biggest thing you need to look at is PING. And that varies significantly based on the system you're connecting to. THEIR connection, and their location in the world compared with your own, make more difference than how good your connection to a local server is. If you have something like a 20ms ping to your ISP, that's pretty good. But if you're in America (whether USa or anywhere else in the two continents), and you're connecting to a server in Europe, your ping will leap to anything upwards of 300 in some cases. With a ping of 500ms, that means you have a half-second delay on your actions being sent to the server, processed, and the results coming back to you. If you see someone and shoot in such a scenario, and they duck back into cover fast enough, your shot will hit nothing but air. Because people NEED immediate feedback, the game displays the shot as soon as you pull the trigger, but that isn't when the results of that shot are calculated. The blue flash is a visual display of your shots hitting a target based on what's on YOUR screen at the time you're pulling the trigger, and NOT on the server verifying that damage. If an enemy is lagging, however, this SHOULDN'T affect your shots. If you're running with a 20ms ping to the game server, you have a 0.02s delay. You're not going to be able to see/measure/complain about that. No matter what the other guy's ping is, the server will be telling you "this is where I think the target is" immediately, and if you shoot in that location, the server will still be saying that you're right, and the target will be in your sights server-side as well. You can get a good estimate of the delay you're going to be experiencing by pulling the trigger on your weapon and watching your ammo count - that's also tracked server-side (this safeguards the game with hacks). When you shoot, the delay between pulling the trigger and seeing the ammo count drop should help you to gauge how far you'll have to lead your shots.
Garrett Blacknova Codex Troopers 2008	Posted - 2013.03.13 11:41:00 - [2] - Quote Beld Errmon wrote: Garrett Blacknova wrote: Don Von Hulio wrote: What causes the blue shield glitch. Is it my network? Their network? The server? If you have something like a 20ms ping to your ISP, that's pretty good. But if you're in America (whether USa or anywhere else in the two continents), and you're connecting to a server in Europe, your ping will leap to anything upwards of 300 in some cases. That would be true only if he is playing on an EU server, there are multiple battleservers around the world. My point was that no matter where in the world you are, there's a chance that you'll end up on a server that DOESN'T give you a great ping, even though you have a good internet connection. Hence why it's as much about the server as it is about your connection. Getting connected to a server you have a bad connection to negates the fact that you have an awesome connection, and having a bad connection will mean you still have a bad connection even if the server is just up the road from you.
Garrett Blacknova Codex Troopers 2010	Posted - 2013.03.13 12:12:00 - [3] - Quote J Lav wrote: Invading Oren wrote: Good thing is it doesn't happen very often but it's still there. Umm, every game is not very often? The above, looooong explanation is a fancy way of saying lag. However you can lag-shoot to compensate for that. In this case, lag-shooting does nothing, and the interface is giving hit markers. One possible explanation is that you are using your weapon at the furthest extent of its range, in which case it deals very little to no damage. Are your AR operation and sharpshooter skills levelled up? If it happens every game, then I'm sorry tobe the bringer of bad news, but the problem is probably at your end.
Garrett Blacknova Codex Troopers 2011	Posted - 2013.03.13 12:44:00 - [4] - Quote Orenji Jiji wrote: Great post, Garret, only one nitpick. Garrett Blacknova wrote: If you fire, and on your screen, you have a clear shot, but before the server received your notification that you pulled the trigger, the enemy's movement data is transmitted telling the server that they're already around the corner. Because the server sees you shooting at nothing instead of the enemy, your shots won't connect. I had this happen with a camper, who did not move at all -- sitting in a corner, scoped in. I lined up for the execution, went into ADS on my SMG and let it rip. I've spat full SMG mag locally and then had to reload, the game was running smoothly and I monitored the connection -- no breakups, the ping was always below 40ms. I had no stops, moonwalking, glitching, tearing -- nothing -- everything looked fine on my end. My squad member confirmed location and lack of movement of my prey. Then no damage registered, I've raged over comms and had my squad tell me that I am not firing at all! I pondered this while I reloaded. Five seconds later my red was already aware of us and I shot him dead, just as he turned back to me and damage started registering again. My squad mates did not have this problem at and one of them was on the same connection. Reiterating: they were getting and dealing damage throughout that weird scene, but from/to other targets. This includes the person sharing my connection. It looked like the server just dropped my actions for a small amount of time, while it informed me about everything around me no problem. Yeah, I know that UDP and routing is complicated, I know you will always blame local WiFi first, but it's moot. The server is buggy. CCP should probably get external parties with experience to investigate, if they haven't already. There are legitimate hit detection issues where people will be registered (for no apparent reason) as being in a location other than where other players see them for hit detection purposes. Usually this results in both you and the other player being unable to hit one another until the glitched player moves. No idea what causes it, but in the majority of cases, it works both ways. And while I don't know for sure if this is the problem, I know some games have trouble when receiving data from multiple devices on a single connection if they share the same IP address (which they usually do). EDIT: I agree that there are bugs that CCP might need help to fix, but they've hired ex-DICE staff for exactly that reason already.