LowLander Hacking MyMap que.......

[PANTONE 7717C]

Sup cajmere long time no smell! Yes I'm still designing after so many years, still very fun.

[haunted]

B100D and TwistbanG are two that I know have this issue consistently every game they play. It feels like an unfair defensive/avoidance advantage, but I'm going to give them all the benefit of the doubt and assume it's not something they can control. Jimmy/Nitr0 wanted me to post something on the forums the other day as he was getting frustrated by it a lot at that time too (was playing B100D at that time).

Not sure TwisTbanG's situation. But my understanding is .B100D is tethering his laptop through his cell phone wireless network. Such connections can have lots of jitter and packet loss.

I feel like there's a name for this phenomenon.

[|iR|Focalor]

Lagbot?

GTA Online on console doesn't have a central multiplayer server, it's all cloud based (which is why multiplayer is so horrible with the frequent disconnects, ... long story short, GTA multiplayer is very buggy and frustrating), and people use lagbot apps, either on their mobile phones, or on their PC's. It's basically a packet flooder program that uploads a shitload of bogus packets to lag your connection. What happens is it lags the OTHER PERSONS view of them. They see them freeze in place, they shoot at them and hit them, but they don't die... because in reality, they aren't THERE in that position anymore. Meanwhile, on the laggers side, they have moved, and shot the person, then they turn off the lagbot, both connections sync again, and the other person dies.

XboxOne was pretty good about guarding against cheating and modding, unlike the previous Xbox360. But the "lagbot" is something they can't do anything about if the game is using cloud multiplayer.

[Admin]

GTA Online on console doesn't have a central multiplayer server, it's all cloud based (which is why multiplayer is so horrible with the frequent disconnects, ... long story short, GTA multiplayer is very buggy and frustrating), and people use lagbot apps, either on their mobile phones, or on their PC's. It's basically a packet flooder program that uploads a shitload of bogus packets to lag your connection. What happens is it lags the OTHER PERSONS view of them. They see them freeze in place, they shoot at them and hit them, but they don't die... because in reality, they aren't THERE in that position anymore. Meanwhile, on the laggers side, they have moved, and shot the person, then they turn off the lagbot, both connections sync again, and the other person dies.

Thankfully the Q2 netcode doesn't quite work that way.

Someone could certainly modify a Q2 client to introduce jitter in their movement, but since all damage is modeled on the server side in real-time, when your client wants to take a shot (say railgun) your client has to send enough movement information to the server such that from the server's POV your player is in the correct position to take the shot accurately in the moment.

There's no syncing in Q2 where the server would simply accept a client saying "yeah I actually shot that guy a moment ago when I was standing over there".

But yes, your player could jitter and then suddenly zoom to where it needs to be in order to take the shot.

Think of it like pausing and unpausing a "speed hack".

This 'effect' could be done deliberately, but also occurs under bad network conditions.

.B100D's ISP shows as Verizon Wireless, which is consistent with someone tethering their computer through their cell phone network. There's probably a ton of packetloss and jitter. (It would show up on his end too, in terms of opponents moving unevenly.)

[Punk_FAS]

There's probably a ton of packetloss and jitter. (It would show up on his end too, in terms of opponents moving unevenly.)

I'm curious about this. In the past number of months, I've gotten random periods of horrible connection issues through my ISP (this was a daily occurrence for a while, but it hasn't happened in a week or so that I've noticed). It's not quake, or the tasty servers, as I've done pings through cmd prompt to my first hop, and I sometimes get like 10% or more packet loss to that first hop, before the packets even leave the local area.

Anyway, even still, when I'm in those situations, when I'm currently connected to a quake 2 server, I'll have a constant phone jack, and I can do literally nothing (can't switch who I'm spectating, or start spectating if I'm not already, at least there's a multi-second delay if it does switch), BUT, when this happens, I can still see everything smoothly going on around me. If I was already chasing/spectating a specific player, it remains smooth for me watching them, but I cannot do anything as far as actions.

Why does that happen, that the server can send me information where I can see everyone moving smoothly, no stutters, etc, but I'm completely frozen, but in Blood's case, he supposedly has the same kind of issues seeing people? Is it possible to only have issues sending packets versus receiving them? Like have your client intentionally withhold random packets from being sent to a server?

[Admin]

Is it possible to only have issues sending packets versus receiving them?

Yes. This can happen, especially if you have an asymmetric route to the server (that is, if packets you send to the server travel by a different route than packets sent by the server to you.)

In the case of tethering through a cell phone network though, crappy performance in both directions would be my default expectation.

[|iR|Focalor]

...then they turn off the lagbot, both connections sync again, and the other person dies.

Thankfully the Q2 netcode doesn't quite work that way.

...

The downside of having a central server for multiplayer is when the server is shitty, EVERYONE gets a shitty connection. The upside is if it's good, nobody can blame the server for shitty game performance. But as far as I can tell... this cloud bullshit isn't any "better." Supposedly the people with shittier connections should experience the shittier problems. But it seems to me it's kinda like video game communism. You got these couple of people with shitty connections... and abra cadabra, now everyone shares their shitty connection, and now it's almost impossible to stay connected to a heavily populated public lobby for longer than 15 minutes at a time.

I can't begin to imagine how expensive or troublesome it would be for GTA/Rockstar to operate their own dedicated servers for GTA Online across all the different platforms, and I guess the cloud based multiplayer "solution" probably saved them a shitload of money.

People are talking about when a GTA6 could come, and from what I'm reading it won't be any sooner than late 2022, and more likely will be 2023 or 2024. That's what making an open-world game with a huge map will get you. SO MUCH goes into it, and it takes so long to make it all fit together and work properly. But when a new GTA game launches, I hope they can solve the problems we've all had with this cloud crap. If I go into a public lobby, it's usually to fuck with people. I get so frustrated when I'm going at it with another player and I got his ass lined up for the perfect shot and then suddenly... I see the list of names on the left side scrolling up the entire screen of how everyone "...has disconnected" and then "You are now in a session by yourself. To play with others, please rejoin a public session."

 

[haunted]

Lagbot?

http://forum.tastyspleen.net/quake/index.php?topic=5649.msg60364#msg60364