What DMing over ZDaemon has taught me

OK, I admit to playing some ZDaemon now and then, just for the kicks. I'm not the best DM player ever, but not the worst one either (at least I saw that I can keep up/not get torn up too badly with people that are supposedly ranked into the absolute ZDaemon top 10 even with a digit of ping difference).

However, I couldn't help but notice the following things:

• Ping times. I know it's a taboo and "scrubby" topic to speak about, but I couldn't help but notice an inverse relationship between ping times on a given server and rank placements. In practice: the top ranking are always occupied by players with two-digit pings (or the lowest one), and the last ones by players with three-digit pings (or the highest ones). OK, VERY OCCASIONALLY I saw an "anomalous" situation where a three-digit ping player made it into the top echelons, but that depended on the nature of a map.
  
• Most deaths seem to occur at respawning simply because spawn spots are getting rocketed/plasmaed/BFGes/shot in the back by camping "1337" players, and you really have no control over that other than perhaps not dying even once. The only way to break that -sometimes- is NOT to respawn immediately, but wait until someone has exhausted his barrage of rockets, by watching through your death cam. Respawning as soon as you die is almost always a bad idea, and will only help the "1337" rack up free frags. Not that I don't grab at that opportunity myself ;-)
  
• "Fragfest" vs "tactical" maps: related to ping times, I noticed that I fared MUCH better in maps that were large enough and diversified enough to exploit alcoves and hideouts, run away from fights, set ambushes and perform long-distance shooting, rather than "arena type" maps where you are bombarded as soon as you spawn and the most important thing is pulling the trigger first. In those, with higher ping times, there's just not a chance in hell: by the time you see an opponent with lower ping he has seen you first, and assuming that you're equal in skill, he has also shot you first.
  
• I wonder: to what degree can a skilled player compensate for or cancel out the effects of lag? And can he ever completely eliminate them, or he will always be someone's bitch, at skill parity?
  
• Despite all that talk about pings, I too managed sometimes to climb up at the top three or even 1st position of pure fragfest maps, but it was always because of some lucky streak e.g. pumping a barrage of rockets or BFG blasts at a "hot spot" and getting "monster kills" or "ultra kills", rather than working my way up kill-by-kill (on fragfest maps, the average survival time is just a few seconds anyway, and in crowded maps you're unlikely to go unnoticed for more than 1-2 seconds anyway). Is that really all there is in such maps?
  
• If you wonder why I just don't choose lower ping servers if I have such an issue with it....TBQH I've never seen populated servers below the 100ms mark, and there aren't that many to choose from anyway. It may be my playing hours (usually 21pm-00am CET+2, but I've never seen more than 10 populated servers with a grand total of 45-50 players. Is the ZDaemon community really that small? And really, how can some people have pings as low as 30-40 ms? Do they keep the servers next to their beds? I can hardly get such low pings even when pinging large local servers such as my work city's university or my ISPs.
  

Maes said:

OK, I admit to playing some ZDaemon now and then, just for the kicks. I'm not the best DM player ever, but not the worst one either (at least I saw that I can keep up/not get torn up too badly with people that are supposedly ranked into the absolute ZDaemon top 10 even with a digit of ping difference).

However, I couldn't help but notice the following things:

• Ping times. I know it's a taboo and "scrubby" topic to speak about, but I couldn't help but notice an inverse relationship between ping times on a given server and rank placements. In practice: the top ranking are always occupied by players with two-digit pings (or the lowest one), and the last ones by players with three-digit pings (or the highest ones). OK, VERY OCCASIONALLY I saw an "anomalous" situation where a three-digit ping player made it into the top echelons, but that depended on the nature of a map.
  

But overall, it's a pleasant way of letting it all out ;-)

It took you this long to figure that out?! It's not scrubby to talk about ping at all. Back in the 56k days we called someone who was only able to win because of their ping LPBs (low ping bastard) and people who exploited the server's prediction to get kills HPBs

Mr. T said:

It took you this long to figure that out?! It's not scrubby to talk about ping at all. Back in the 56k days we called someone who was only able to win because of their ping LPBs (low ping bastard) and people who exploited the server's prediction to get kills HPBs

*shrug* from my -usually less than polite- online debates in other online communities, just bringing up that issue that maybe -maybe- ping had anything to do with one's performance or *GASP* that it could alter the game mechanics compared to single player was enough to open the "scrubby noob" can of worms.

No matter how obvious, it was just something none wished to speak about, and was avoided like the plague. If someone broke that unwritten rule, the reply from the community elders was not simply condescending: it was vitriolic, as if someone struck an exposed nerve ending.

Mr. T said:

Back in the 56k days we called someone who was only able to win because of their ping LPBs (low ping bastard) and people who exploited the server's prediction to get kills HPBs

The problem here is that in the typical online gaming community -at least how I perceive it- you're unlikely to ever reverse that situation or meet any other player in person and agree to test your skills in a fair setting for everyone (e.g. in a local LAN with zero latency for everyone).

The result: a win is a win no matter how it was achieved, and anyone contesting or complaining is just a noob (at least that's the prevailing attitude from my POV).

Winning with high ping isnt hard. Just enough practice and strategy and tons of well placed spam.

Catoptromancy said:

Winning with high ping isnt hard. Just enough practice and strategy and tons of well placed spam.

And if you can live with being called a "camper" (yeah, I've been called that too, in ZDaemon of all places ;-)

It really dont matter what you do, people will always call you a camper.
In shareware DM I would SR-50 back and forth between powerups and ammo traversing almost entire map and because I keep meeting same people in same place I get called camper.
Brit10 dont matter, you can get a higher score by not camping the obvious places. Actually thats the fun part of the brit10 strategy, you can always kill someone camping so just make sure noone gets the position and you can easily exceed by playing normally, and spamming the camp spot once in awhile.

lulz aside.. coop > dm

RTC_Marine said:

lulz aside.. coop > dm

Speaking of which...is there any way to disable that pesky "3rd person view" from ZDaemon during coop games? It's annoying as fuck, dunno who thought it was a good idea to even implement it.

Ping isn't the issue it used to be, as at least some parts of the netcode have been unlagged for years (and ST has just followed suit). Can't speak for really high numbers as I rarely play with over 150-200 (central/west coast USA servers) but I usually find 100-150 (east coast USA) to be fine.

The spawnkill issue is just the way it is, whether it be a small map where you can throw projectiles at spawns or any size map where you ssg someone before they bring their weapon up. (the latter is a much bigger issue as it's not map-dependent, and that's why ST has spawn protection)

As for unpopulated low ping servers...well, there was a recent flamewar discussion about Euro CTF being dead and the only active servers being American, usually the NJ ones (which is generally true unfortunately, but tbh if you're only playing at that ping you'll eventually master it). Stuff like that tends to go through phases anyway.

Maes said:
Speaking of which...is there any way to disable that pesky "3rd person view" from ZDaemon during coop games? It's annoying as fuck, dunno who thought it was a good idea to even implement it.

i believe you hit the chasecam key by mistake (f11 by default iirc). i haven't heard of a server forcing 3rd person view and i'm not convinced such a thing is even possible.

high ping matters more with hitscan weapons, of course... spam ffa maps with heavy weapons all around allow even high pinging players to win, but the very specific tactics of b10-style slaughters require you to learn them through weeks and months of dying and not having fun. :) i don't really understand why it is so popular.

The Ultimate DooMer said:
The spawnkill issue is just the way it is, whether it be a small map where you can throw projectiles at spawns or any size map where you ssg someone before they bring their weapon up. (the latter is a much bigger issue as it's not map-dependent, and that's why ST has spawn protection)

uhh.. zdaemon has the spawn protection flag as well, but no one ever uses it. actually from my 1on1/ctf experience with skulltag it isn't used there as well and the only reason why spawn rape doesn't work in st is because of a weapon desync bug allowing you to fire weapons before they are fully brought up.

TBQH I don't know what would happen if all players had comparable pings.

I'm sure that the one 110 ms player woulnd't stand out compared to 120-130 ms ones, but I get typical pings of 130-150 ms vs players that range from 30 to 80 ms (with players over 100 ms like me being a relative minority or just ragequitting, dunno), so there's always this asymmetry to take into account.

But as you said, I guess one can adapt to a play style that best suits his connection's limitations (although it sucks to know that you'll never be technically able to pull the trigger first in a one-on-one).

About chasecam: dunno, all coop servers I've tried so far seem to have it on. Dunno if it comes from my permanent settings or it can be set by server flags, but it has ruined coop for me so far. Will let you know if I can disable it somehow.

dew said:

I don't really understand why it [brit10] is so popular.

Most of its maps are fragfests, with maybe one or two allowing for any sort of tactics or moving for more than 2 seconds undetected :-p I even exploit the exit doors as hideouts to "snake" some poor devil and break the spawn-get camped-respawn cycle.

On pure fragfest fights, I know I don't stand a chance unless I am preceded by a barrage of 100 plasma shots or 8 rockets ;-) And it's always fun to LEAD MY AIM with hitscan weapons ;-)

Talk about fuzzy physics....

Maes said:

About chasecam: dunno, all coop servers I've tried so far seem to have it on. Dunno if it comes from my permanent settings or it can be set by server flags, but it has ruined coop for me so far. Will let you know if I can disable it somehow.

You could go to options -> customize controls... look in the "other" section, you can bind a key to chasecam and turn it off.

Or you could edit the zdoom.ini file and set chaseview=false

Hope this helps.

Will try that, thanks :-p

There's no reason to turn coop into a fucking joke because of a single setting (it feels like controlling a RC helicopter, seriously!)

Maes said:
(although it sucks to know that you'll never be technically able to pull the trigger first in a one-on-one).

sad but true, i get the same in us servers. in pure 1on1 encounters you can try prediction/anticipation shots, however you want to call them. when you meet someone around a corner and both of you are surprised, your only hope is that he's either slow or misses horribly. :P

in more reasonable ffa games than b10-style bfg races deviousness can take you a long distance. spamming spawns, chokepoints and desirable weapons/items with heavy weapons or camping these spots with ssg - remember, spawned player is defenseless while bringing his weapon up. or my favourite greenwar tactic: find two ssg-dancing players, wait for one of them to shoot, pick off the wounded one, then it's 1on1 with a confused opponent - he usually wastes his next shot on the already killed guy. :) then run to the nearest spawn spot in hopes you will get a conversion frag... etc etc.

Maes said:

Will try that, thanks :-p

There's no reason to turn coop into a fucking joke because of a single setting (it feels like controlling a RC helicopter, seriously!)

yeah you probably have it on by default. Chasecam is disabled on deathmatch servers because its considered a "cheat" because you can peek around corners and shit. I'd welcome anyones ability to exploit that to their advantage though when the player sprite occupies about an eigth of the plane of view.

Skulltag has way better ping than Zdaemon (specially on the latest version). Also Zdaemon's ssg is somehow unbalanced, letting you kill in one shot on distances that on Skulltag just do medium or even low damage, which makes plasma and rockets almost useless (this can be a good or bad thing depending how do you look at it).

Skulltag has the most variety of game modes, and mods (like master of puppets that lets you possess monsters against marines or others).

The only "advantage" I see on zdaemon is the ranking stuff which only ranks how much you need to get a life.

Vegeta said:

Skulltag has way better ping than Zdaemon (specially on the latest version). Also Zdaemon's ssg is somehow unbalanced, letting you kill in one shot on distances that on Skulltag just do medium or even low damage, which makes plasma and rockets almost useless (this can be a good or bad thing depending how do you look at it).

This might be Vanilla's original RNG, which is supposed to make the vanilla/ZDaemon SSG more powerful than the ZDoom/ST SSG (I haven't noticed, and I think the SSG is already powerful enough).

Skulltag's new Unlagged is definitely helpful, damaging enemies if the crosshair is on them, so no more leading shots.


In terms of ping, I got higher pings when using dialup or stealing Wifi, but now I have a faster wired connection, and I can find many servers under 100 ping, even some in Canada (I'm in the eastern U.S.)

phi108 said:

This might be Vanilla's original RNG, which is supposed to make the vanilla/ZDaemon SSG more powerful than the ZDoom/ST SSG (I haven't noticed, and I think the SSG is already powerful enough).

this post sums it up nicely. vegeta's claims are rather ignorant.

Eh, I used to play a lot on ZDaemon, didn't like DM much. Most maps had it down to "who shoots first" with only SSG's. CTF was somewhat better IMO but the maps tended to be too gimmicky for my tastes. So I liked Coop the best even though most servers were only running Invasion UAC or Coopbuildm. (which I don't like- just rooms of monsters)

Regarding map styles on DM: I like small, straightforward maps the best, UT style. Don't like the huge Duke 3D- style "hunt and ambush" maps much.

Also.. an RPG mod for coop Doom would be mad cool. (think UT2004 InvasionRPG)

Playing FFA on ZDaemon is generally a waste of time for the reasons you listed. If you really want to get a feel for the way ZDaemon plays, you probably want to try duels or CTF. Larger CTF games (anything above 5v5) tend to be stupid too, but it really never gets as bad as FFA.

Ping is still a huge issue, but not necessarily for accuracy... although I assume you can be lagged enough that neither ZDaemon nor Skulltag can correct (Spleen would know more about Skulltag). As dew noted, both ports have "unlagged" code now, which basically calculates collisions using the positions of players when the shooting player took the shot instead of the current positions, but as Dew also noted, this won't help you if the server kills you before it receives your "shoot" command. This even happens on a smaller scale; if your opponent's commands reach the server even 1 TIC before yours (the difference here can be anywhere from 10ms to 28.5ms) their shot can beat yours, and your shot will never register. The general feeling players get when this happens is that they got robbed - like they shot and nothing happened - and high ping players get robbed a lot.

If you want to watch some great ZDaemon CTF matches, there are about a million IDL demos at http://www.intldoomleague.org/demos. You can pick a different season if you click on the "Summer 2010" label near the top-right. We have some European players too, so you can see the effect of lag on their playing styles: Gyrossman, dew, Fluffles, Souler (Mexico), mikehail (west U.S).

If you want to coop though, Skulltag is easily the best port for that because it supports all the new ZDoom stuff.

Not to brag, but I regularly won 6, 7, 8 player deathmatches with ~250 ping. Ok, it's to brag.

Maes said:
OK, VERY OCCASIONALLY I saw an "anomalous" situation where a three-digit ping player made it into the top echelons, but that depended on the nature of a map.
[...]
I wonder: to what degree can a skilled player compensate for or cancel out the effects of lag? And can he ever completely eliminate them, or he will always be someone's bitch, at skill parity?

It's just a factor, hence some solid European players sometimes join North American tourneys and get pretty far or win the (not highest) divisions.

And really, how can some people have pings as low as 30-40 ms? Do they keep the servers next to their beds? I can hardly get such low pings even when pinging large local servers such as my work city's university or my ISPs.

Europe is small and its central countries have insanely fast connections, so if the server is relatively close, pings are really low.

*shrug* from my -usually less than polite- online debates in other online communities, just bringing up that issue that maybe -maybe- ping had anything to do with one's performance or *GASP* that it could alter the game mechanics compared to single player was enough to open the "scrubby noob" can of worms.

No matter how obvious, it was just something none wished to speak about, and was avoided like the plague. If someone broke that unwritten rule, the reply from the community elders was not simply condescending: it was vitriolic, as if someone struck an exposed nerve ending.

Yeah, I've encountered people that got very pissed off at a mention about pings. As far as I'm concerned it depends on when it's said. If it's rubbed on other people's faces for no apparent reason, you should expect them to get annoyed about the mention. But if mentioned in passing there often aren't any negative repercussions. If people are gloating about winning and their pings are lower, I think it's game, as well.

Players are sometimes sympathetic, too, acknowledging advantages, although this happens more in private or competitive environments where people are not in it for the lulz as much.

RTC_Marine said:
lulz aside.. coop > dm

Where? In public servers coop is degraded by the need for a lack of friendly damage, as well as settings to allow enough ammo when people come and go or die a lot. Private games are more fun, but that also goes for other modes. Both coop and DM are great, in any case.

The Ultimate DooMer said:
the only active servers being American, usually the NJ ones (which is generally true unfortunately,

Yeah, strangely the scene seems to echo economic developments. It diminished somewhat in central countries (Europe and Anglo America) but got a surge from Latin America and to a lesser degree gained more people from the peripheral area around Europe. Southern and especially eastern US servers are in a good location to connect the Americas in general because of the way the net is laid out.

dew said:
sad but true, i get the same in us servers. in pure 1on1 encounters you can try prediction/anticipation shots, however you want to call them. when you meet someone around a corner and both of you are surprised, your only hope is that he's either slow or misses horribly. :P

True, although for some reason I'm pretty bad at fighting in open areas, and better in hallways or closed areas with rather bad ping, although this may be related to how I attack. More linear maps without too much space even out things the most.

Ladna said:
If you want to coop though, Skulltag is easily the best port for that because it supports all the new ZDoom stuff.

That matters to people who like those features. I tend to join vanilla WAD servers, for one. Skulltag does have two more general advantages. First, that it allows "coop weapons" as originally designed, and not just single player weapons plus the option of starting with the shotgun. Additionally, its net code is better for giant levels.

dew said:

vegeta's claims are rather ignorant.

What a surprise. Every vegeta post is a fascinating read. For example, I didn't know that program A can have "way better ping" than program B - on the same physical connection:

Vegeta said:

Skulltag has way better ping than Zdaemon

Apparently, ST must have superior magic programmed in, compared to ZD.

Excuse me sir, I was just talking about the netcode. Skulltag's lag (specially on the latest version) affects much less gameplay than the one from zdaemon (this turns obvious when you play with an average ping of 180 or higher). I'm not much into computers things.

Well, unless connections are guaranteed-performance, 100% packet-synchronized (which can only happen over T1/T3/ATM/relay network) or the netcode is blocking-synchronized (which means the game momentarily pauses for everyone until every last packet is received, eventually asking for ACKs/repeats), there can't be total immunity from the effects of lag.

It's basically a "best effort" to reach a compromise for both those players desiring apparently fluid and uninterrupted gameplay (I know almost none would tolerate network blocking in a real-time game), and those wanting some degree of "forgiveness" from the server. Of course, no method will be without flaws or criticism.

dew said:

this post sums it up nicely. vegeta's claims are rather ignorant.

Using the info given by Alexmax, I wrote some quick DECORATE code using hitscans without random damage and with set damage or 5, 10, or 15 to make every bullet and pellet follow the chances he gave:

Doom P_Random()
===============
Damage 15: 36.33%
Damage 10: 34.38%
Damage 5: 29.30%


I guess the SSG now feels closer to vanilla, though the DECORATE is super bloated, because it iterates though "a_jump"s for every bullet or pellet.

http://pastebin.com/hA1WzgrH

The Ultimate DooMer said:

As for unpopulated low ping servers...well, there was a recent flamewar discussion about Euro CTF being dead and the only active servers being American, usually the NJ ones (which is generally true unfortunately, but tbh if you're only playing at that ping you'll eventually master it). Stuff like that tends to go through phases anyway.

I get 10-20 ping to NJ suckers! Ahahahahahahahahaha. The servers are practically right next door attached to the same fiber optic backbone as mine.

But when I had 56k, I was able to get half the score of a 1/3 pinger back in 1.06. Even though I shot way before another playing I died.

Heh, for the last two days for some reason I get three and four-digit pings, only during certain very narrow hours I get down to the three-digit, <300 ms domain....must be some fucked up packet shaping.

Other than that, how come there never was/is a Doom "modem league"? I recall those were very popular in the late 90s/early 00s with many gaming communities, and the rationale behind them was to accept only players with the same ping handicap in the hopes of making the game fairer for everyone.

These seem to have all but disappeared with DSL, cable and whatnot, quite wrongly IMO since there can still be extreme ping differences (sometimes I get way worse pings with DSL than I ever got with dial-up). I guess it's not as easy to prove/accept that you get consistently bad pings to justify separating "non-modem" players into latency-segregated leagues ...

Skulltag has way better ping than Zdaemon (specially on the latest version).

Wow I can already tell you are a real dumbass. For one, how the fuck can a program have better ping than another program? You seriously don't have a clue as to what you are talking about. And seeing as how you don't have access to either program's source code your claim about one having better netcode than the other is moot. Of course you pretty much proved my point already:

I'm not much into computers things.

Also Zdaemon's ssg is somehow unbalanced ... (A bunch of other dumb shit not worth quoting.)

Ugh... Could it possibly be because ZDaemon has a dmflag that emulates the old number generator that vanilla doom uses? If this flag is turned off the ssg damage should be the same. You just love to spread misinformation don't you?

Speaking of which...is there any way to disable that pesky "3rd person view" from ZDaemon during coop games? It's annoying as fuck, dunno who thought it was a good idea to even implement it.

Were you able to turn that off? If you weren't I can probably fix it for you.

And yeah I have to pretty much agree with what Ladna has said. FFA is a joke due to the fact that the noobs enjoy playing 16 players on Brit10. Obviously there's little skill involved. Dueling and CTF is definitely the best modes by far. However, the weekly FYBO tournament being run by Kilgore are quite fun. You should try one of those out sometime Maes :).

Vegeta said:

Excuse me sir, I was just talking about the netcode. Skulltag's lag (specially on the latest version) affects much less gameplay than the one from zdaemon (this turns obvious when you play with an average ping of 180 or higher). I'm not much into computers things.

You've always been so terrible at playing Doom to begin with that it's hard to take your opinion seriously ever!