Netcode Lag/Delay Test Reports

[arstal]

Japan does have an arcade fighter (DBZ game I think) which runs on GGPO.

I think the real bottleneck is console RAM for GGPO on console, though Skullgirls makes me wonder with its 3 on 3 and lots of animation.

[kofrookie]

I don't understand the hyperbole with the netcode complaints.  I play 2002 on GGPO all the time so I have good benchmark of what's good and what's not good.  Is 13's netcode GGPO?  No.  Is it bad?  No!  I'm in NB Canada and I play a guy in Texas.  We're both on wired broadband and like 3000 miles apart and ping about 100-120 ms from each other.  We get a two bar connection and the games are super playable.  There is a tiny bit of delay but it's nothing like 2002UM.  It's as close to GGPO as non-rollback netcode could be.  I can do combos just fine, and not just little bread and butters but true HD combos.  3 bar connections are even better.

Yes, occasionally I play people with shitty connections where the delay is huge.  I send them a message asking if they're on wireless and usually they are.  Others are probably playing without opening all of their ports or without an open NAT.

I think you guys seriously need to check your shit and stop expecting any online to be playable on wireless.  Wireless drops packets all the time and is too unreliable for real-time applications.

Just to be clear, I would have preferred 13 use GGPO just like everyone else, but this constant vitriol about how "atrocious" the netcode is just factually untrue and is probably giving people who were otherwise interested the wrong impression about its playability.  Campaign all you want for GGPO netcode in this version or the next, but don't take a big shit all over the netcode when it's perfectly playable.

[steamwolf]

thec0re3: You are comparing a new game to games almost ten years old running on a PC emulator. When it comes to emulation, that opens the doors to be able to do whatever because this is what Ponder has done: He has tacked GGPO onto the EMULATOR known as Final Burn Alpha. The emulator is running off of your PC. The game engine for say, KoF 2002, is running inside of an emulator tricking the game into believing it is being played on the original arcade machine. However, Ponder did not take 2002's game engine and code GGPO directly into the game engine. That would be impossible without rebuilding the game's engine, which would require Ponder to have the source code of the 02 Game Engine which is a private, copy-written engine owned by SNKPlaymore. Emulation and modern day gaming is two totally different things here man so it's not a fair comparison at all. I do not know the specifics as to why 3rd Strike OE can use GGPO, but I'd hazard a guess at saying they either re-built the game engine with GGPO added on, or created a custom made emulator for PS3 to run 3rd Strike in and said emulator was built around GGPO. But I am unsure on this one here.

For a new fighting game with a much more complex game engine like KoF XIII, it would be impossible to just tack on GGPO if the game's engine was not built to accommodate it. It's just that simple. Ask any software engine developer, whether it be a web programmer or game developer. They will tell you the same thing. The car's engine has to be able to handle everything you add on to it. If the engine is not powerful enough to handle say, I dunno....turbos or something (forgive me if I don't know car) then it won't work. Does that make any sense?

I'm no expert but how is it that the previous engines,all of them built differently, can run through GGPO with no problem? Isn't it more impart due to the system in which there running on? Like the fact that GGPO and other places like it run on FBA.

Lets just say in the future, we get an xbox360 emulator and they offer netplay doesn't it work the same way in theory? Like I said I honestly don't no how the GGPO code works but I tend to hear people tell me how everything isn't possible and then one day I look up and it is. I understand from a financial and production standpoint it may not be feasible, maybe japanese companies don't understand how important netcode is to game sales but I doubt that. 

I'm new to the whole game creation seen. I'm actually going to school for game art but I haven't really delved deep into game engines as yet. This month will be my second time working in one. Now if today's game engines are different then the one's from yester year and would never allow the type of things that GGPO and other emulators can do without those things being built in from day one then I see where your coming from but a lot of times it seems like its just an excuse not to try its all theory until someone actually does it and says its not possible.  

Because the game is rendered in 2D, not 3D. 3D games don't work on GGPO.

This is not true. The only reason GGPO was not selected for SFIV was because it was process heavy to Capcom and they didn't feel like trying to work with it. It is entirely possible to put GGPO to a 3D game, you just have to make sure the game engine is coded in a way to allow for GGPO.

[darkTown2]

Japan does have an arcade fighter (DBZ game I think) which runs on GGPO.

I think the real bottleneck is console RAM for GGPO on console, though Skullgirls makes me wonder with its 3 on 3 and lots of animation.

it's a dbz game called dbz zenkai battle royal just to back up your post.

[zeech]

Here we go again.  Every time GGPO gets discussed people start parading the same ignorance and misinformation.

Rollback netcode works for both 2D and 3D games.  In fact, the concept of rollback was inspired by the netcode techniques used in first person shooters.

Rollback netcodes have a fairly high overhead in processing.  When a rollback occurs, the game has to process multiple simulation frames instantly to figure out the new gamestate.   Its possible that newer games, which already fail to run at perfect framerate on consoles, dont have the spare processor capacity to run a rollback system.  But it's also possible that framerate drops are due to GPU being maxed out, so there is spare CPU.

GGPO can work on any game in an emulator, because the emulator can trivially save the entire gamestate and restore it, and also run simulation frames without drawing, which is fundamental to doing rollbacks.  However, a game that wants to implement GGPO natively can be internally designed to save/restore/run its gamestate, and often it can do so much more efficiently than an emulator.  Since it can be more selective about what data it wants to remember/process.  Some games written for PC are designed this way from the beginning, so that they will run simulation frames ("ticks") seperately from visual frames.

GGPO can theoretically be added to any game.  However, the design of the game engine and other limitations can make doing so require far more work than a game dev wants to spend.  Factors include:
- Whether the engine can be easily recoded to store multiple frames of gamestate and quickly run simulation frames faster than visual frames.
- Whether the game has been optimised enough to leave a lot of spare CPU power for the netcode.

If the game engine isnt convenient for those 2 things, then adding GGPO would require a lot of work, or even be impossible. (Certainly there is a limit to how much you can optimise, so it might be that some games cannot use GGPO on current consoles without cutting physics/graphics/sound quality etc.)

2D games are actually more hardware intensive than 3D games these days - modern consoles are optimised for 3D graphics, not for rendering very large 2D sprites.  Low RAM is especially a problem.  So, if SNK had to do on the fly sprite decompression to fit the sprites into RAM, then that would use up a lot of CPU, for example.

---------------------------------

So anyways, thats the truth as far as I know it.  I'm not an expert on netcode, but I am a professional software engineer and I've been interested in GGPO and rollback netcode. So I think I have a basic understanding of some of the issues involved.

[pablofsi]

Conclussion: let's hope KOF XV comes with Supercade 2 built-in for PS4.

[BioBooster]

@zeech, thanks for this writeup. This is great to know.

[steamwolf]

This. Everyone listen to this guy it's basically what I was trying to say lol. Thank you, zeech.

Here we go again.  Every time GGPO gets discussed people start parading the same ignorance and misinformation.

Rollback netcode works for both 2D and 3D games.  In fact, the concept of rollback was inspired by the netcode techniques used in first person shooters.

Rollback netcodes have a fairly high overhead in processing.  When a rollback occurs, the game has to process multiple simulation frames instantly to figure out the new gamestate.   Its possible that newer games, which already fail to run at perfect framerate on consoles, dont have the spare processor capacity to run a rollback system.  But it's also possible that framerate drops are due to GPU being maxed out, so there is spare CPU.

GGPO can work on any game in an emulator, because the emulator can trivially save the entire gamestate and restore it, and also run simulation frames without drawing, which is fundamental to doing rollbacks.  However, a game that wants to implement GGPO natively can be internally designed to save/restore/run its gamestate, and often it can do so much more efficiently than an emulator.  Since it can be more selective about what data it wants to remember/process.  Some games written for PC are designed this way from the beginning, so that they will run simulation frames ("ticks") seperately from visual frames.

GGPO can theoretically be added to any game.  However, the design of the game engine and other limitations can make doing so require far more work than a game dev wants to spend.  Factors include:
- Whether the engine can be easily recoded to store multiple frames of gamestate and quickly run simulation frames faster than visual frames.
- Whether the game has been optimised enough to leave a lot of spare CPU power for the netcode.

If the game engine isnt convenient for those 2 things, then adding GGPO would require a lot of work, or even be impossible. (Certainly there is a limit to how much you can optimise, so it might be that some games cannot use GGPO on current consoles without cutting physics/graphics/sound quality etc.)

2D games are actually more hardware intensive than 3D games these days - modern consoles are optimised for 3D graphics, not for rendering very large 2D sprites.  Low RAM is especially a problem.  So, if SNK had to do on the fly sprite decompression to fit the sprites into RAM, then that would use up a lot of CPU, for example.

---------------------------------

So anyways, thats the truth as far as I know it.  I'm not an expert on netcode, but I am a professional software engineer and I've been interested in GGPO and rollback netcode. So I think I have a basic understanding of some of the issues involved.

[Ky0]

hey guys, I dont know but it seems the onlie in US, are not so good like that...
Its weird, causes here (europe), 70% of my online matchs, are green and blue (YES BLUE between UK guys, spanish guys, FR guys, etc!!! o_O )  so I'm not understanding that diference!

And yes, 4 bars (blue) connection is close to the offline! Definitely, MUCH BETTER than that 4 bars of SSF4!!!

Honestly, I have no complains about NetCode, quite the contrary!

[thec0re3]

hey guys, I dont know but it seems the onlie in US, are not so good like that...
Its weird, causes here (europe), 70% of my online matchs, are green and blue (YES BLUE between UK guys, spanish guys, FR guys, etc!!! o_O )  so I'm not understanding that diference!

And yes, 4 bars (blue) connection is close to the offline! Definitely, MUCH BETTER than that 4 bars of SSF4!!!

Honestly, I have no complains about NetCode, quite the contrary!

I think its just the fact that many of us run on a different type of connection. While most of us have migrated over to using cable, some of us are still using DSL others are using wireless so we have no consistency when it comes to connections. I'd like to think at least 70% of the US are on cable networks and so those are the ones who are having a better experience with the game IMO.

[Ashspiralingblood]

tried online today, at first I hated it, so much input lag and slowdowns, then went to players match where the connection was much better with some hiccups here and there, went back to rank match and after a while the connections were better, the netcode is playable but it needs some improvements because input lag is not fun at all.

[thec0re3]

I finally got a chance to try out a different connection definitely got better results. I managed to get two matches with 3 bars and both felt much better.

Played  matches with the two bar connection from FL to Ny and those were horrible especially the input lag.

I was playing on a wired connection. I did not open any ports as the xblive test didn't come up with any errors when I did the test. I may open them if I do get a chance to play again.

[Nocturnal]

GGs to Sabin from yesterdays matches. Giby was here with me and we tested the online. We had a 2 bad connection Coast to Coat (CA to NY). There was delay for sure. The delay reminded me of the old school Kailelra server days. I did feel at times that the connection got smoother for me and Giby but that was probably because we were adjusting to the delay. It was hard to react to certain things though but combos were still possible. Still the online isn't the greatest but it's a lot better than XII that's for sure. Aslo Sabin's Fios helped out a lot. If it was anyone else with normal net it would have been unplayable I'm sure. Here's a recording of us playing since he was streaming it: http://www.twitch.tv/nycfurby/b/300958109

[Kane317]

I'd like to test my connection with Art as well, I need to upgrade my modem but I recently bumped up my internet speed to the fastest COX cable has to offer.  My up is around 30Mbps down (which should improve as it's limited to the modem) and roughly 7-8up.

[Reiki.Kito]

Played against Nilcam today. We were at 2bars and there was some delay, but I was still able to pull off some combos. I did drop some that I usually don't, but all and all, it wasn't terrible.