[crossfire] Lag

[Anton Oussik]

When a player moves, there is currently a delay of one round trip
until anything starts happening. Whilst for most modern Internet
connections this does not pose a significant problem, when interacting
with other players the lag seems to accumulate. They have 900ms lag, I
have 1200ms lag, now between us we suddenly have 2100ms lag. Since a
player can cover many tiles in 2100ms, it becomes very difficult to
keep track of any other player when travelling, and in general to
coordiante with others successfuly. This limits the useful
multiplayernes of crossfire. Parties 5-6 players in size start to fall
apart as players can not keep track of each other. Similar problems
exist for persise stopping of movement. Laggy connections tend to make
you overrun your destination. For example if I am running, and want to
stop, it will take another 3-4 screens (at 20x20 tiles) before I come
to a halt.

Is there anything that can be done to improve movement on laggy
connections? Could the server send the client a matrix of what tiles
on the map can be moved to, and send updates of that as they change
for example? Any better ideas?