Question about Racing (lag/spikes)

[ominous]

Ok well whenever I play racing maps, I find that my ship is actually moving slower than others. Now, before you all say "stfu omin u just suk," let me explain.

I tested this with turbo and some other players by simply going neck and neck moving straight forward on a ramp (not turning, or anything else). What happens is, on my screen the players I am racing against are gradually spiking in small increments ahead of my ship. On their screen, my ship is gradually spiking backwards in small increments. Wtf is going on?

[Reaper_Charlie]

I have no idea. You might just have a poor connection. You should check this out. I've noticed this with a few other players, notably when playing in Bomb/Portarama, and going down the long belts at the same time as a teammate.

Either way, we don't (and can't, really) factor that into the race. If the guy with the better connection wins by default, there's nothing much we can really do about it. If it disrupts gameplay immensely (which I have never noticed before) then you should submit a ticket via http://bugs.spark-stuff.net

<3

[ominous]

word, thanks. I don't have a poor connection though thats the thing. I live right next to New Jersey and it occurs in NJ servers when I have 12 ping. I don't spike AT ALL either.

I'm beginning to think it may be due to my connection being too good :P

[astrix]

12 ping? hax

[Reaper_Charlie]

Lag is different for everyone. All we can do at this point is to monitor people to make sure there is no hacking going on. I'm not aware of any definitive way to do this other than [deleted] so we will be relying on that technique. It's caught everyone so far =]

[1600PaAve]

I watched a race on Saturday night, I seen not once but twice, gold had atleast 5 or 6 ship lead , and Matrix pulled up to him. Gold also seen this. I hope during a close races this won't be as bad.

[Reaper_Charlie]

It has been speculated by different admins/spectators that Matrix was speed-hacking for sh*ts and giggles. I personally have not looked at any logs, and didn't see the difference.

[matrix]

I got perm-banned for "speed hacking" that night. I was spiking forward.

[Gold]

Yeah I believe you Matrix, I know you're not that good with computers that way.. like the patch haha. But get that lag fixed O.o

[matrix]

lol

[Reaper_Charlie]

It happens even to the best of us... but since we know that Matrix isn't the best of us, we can unabashedly bash his head into the concrete as we pass by his (allegedly) speed-hacking corpse! :)

Jk. I believe you too, it's happened to me like that before (but only about 1.02 times the speed of Gold, not 1.4 like you). But that'd never fly in a real SRL race. That's Game-Altering Behavior, listed under VIII. Cheating and/or Game-Altering Behavior in the SRL Rules.

I don't believe anyone should be perm-banned for speed-hacking. That's a bit much for something so small. Since SRL players' performance don't have (much) effect on other players, (unless someone's on red, nading the track, lol) we can effectively nullify the recording of any behavior that we deem as cheating and/or game-altering. So there's not much to ban for. We can ban a person from SRL matches without them being banned from Spark.

And then again, there's always the Nivatarian Test to find out whether they're ACTUALLY cheating, or just lagging. If they cheat in another league's games though, ban them from Spark for sure.

[SingleThreat]

(unless someone's on red, nading the track, lol)

I smell a new twist to SRL

Spectators of the race should be able to fire nades to spice things up a bit :)

I can see it now.. 15 players running aorund the track and 10 spectators nading like crazy while green fights for first place.. the cheering of the crowed for that player in the back to get his ass up front and the yelling between reds TEAM CHAT to "kill GOLD he is out in front and smoking!"

not very practicle but just saying it woul dbe a fun event..

you could even advertise that spark celebs race race around the track and people can sign up to be on the red team to nade them as they go around. Mage, fordus, parrotman, toughshot, etc. all in a race helpless for al the mid/lower ier players to nade the crap out of!! lol

Just kidding of course, but it was fun to speculate on :)

[turbo]

That would be pretty cool actually. That reminded me of the movie Apocalypto when all the Mayan slaves were forced to run away on that strip only to be hit by arrows and other weapons by their enemies

[Reaper_Charlie]

Yeah we played around with the idea of introducing an SRL*Damage map, but we haven't really found a way to do that in such a way that people won't be utterly disappointed by the outcome of being destroyed mid-track.

It was really, really annoying in arlswifter for instance when some dude would come in on red, wait for two nades to load, and then when you're busy twisting around turns, he lobs them both at a corner you're about to reach, and as you round it, you get destroyed... I mean... wtf.

Initially I was going to have 2 teams (red and green) race along similar racetracks (not quite parallel all the time) such as in 420slide, but the difference would be that the tracks would be more open, and there would be more obstacles to eat nade damage if such were the case. Also, having the tracks cross at some point would be cool, so that you could sneak up behind other racers and destroy them from behind if you were a better racer (but got killed earlier).

Like you said, it wouldn't be very practical in terms of a timed event, but maybe just having a 'Red Team Wins' or 'Green Team Wins' accomplishment would be enough. We wouldn't be able to plug that into the SRL database as a WIN per se, but it'd be a fun thing for race tournaments, and if it became popular, I suppose we'd definitely have to find some way to record it in our DB. Maybe just have two separate SRL gametypes =]

There would be a bunch of variables to play around with on different maps too, such as recharge rate for specials, damage rate for specials and lasers, and what percentage of each team would have to finish for a team to win the thing. Because it would be very disappointing to be killed if it was an every-man-for-himself kind of thing, it would have to be more of a team event.


Thanks for the motivation/ideas, Single!

You've SINGLE(heh)-handedly revived my interest in a concept that I'd previously written off =]

[devil]

That would be pretty cool actually. That reminded me of the movie Apocalypto when all the Mayan slaves were forced to run away on that strip only to be hit by arrows and other weapons by their enemies

GREAT movie!

Anyways, this nading thing sounds like a blast. I would love to be a nader!