[crossfire] Lag

[Brendan Lally]

On 1/26/06, Anton Oussik <antonoussik at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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?

One thing that might work for this, is something I have been idling
toying with concerning movement.

I was looking a few weeks ago at adding a 'goto' command so that the
player could send a command goto <x><y> (relative to the player) and
then, as long as they had no further commands sent, they would go
towards that point. (in terms of controls, this would map to clicking
on the map view somewhere). - the stupid implementation of this is
quite straightforward, getting the routing to work properly is harder.

In any case if that became the defacto standard way of moving (as it
is in most graphical RPGs), then it would be possible to figure out
what route the player would take, and send the moves they would make
to the other players in the room early. - this would still lead to the
ocassional de-sync issue (when they change direction, or something
moves in the way) but it would be a noticable improvement over what is
currently there. (the extension to that would be to have an attackto
command (or a flag to goto) so that monsters could be targeted to get
the player to follow them and attack when they are in range. -
probably such advance telling of commands should only occur if the
ping time is bigger than the tick time though.

In general though, if your ping time is over a second, you need a
better internet connection, most games are difficult to play when you
are that laggy.