Server Help :: View topic - Yes, you can "warp" players and keep velocity

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ASSS Questions - Yes, you can "warp" players and keep velocity

Mine GO BOOM - Thu May 18, 2006 10:22 pm
Post subject: Yes, you can "warp" players and keep velocity

Mr Ekted wrote:

If you send a position packet TO the client that it's for, the client will accept is as its own position/etc? Interesting. So you can turn on stuff like xradar/stealth/etc?

In the original test arena that is (or was) distributed with ASSS has this feature shown. When you enter a certain region, it would add 100 to your X position, and send you the same position packet you sent. Its a weird hop on your screen, but yes, Continuum treats your own data exactly like other player's data.

Turning on/off x-radar and other items will be weird, as you'll probably try to set their speed/position similar to where you think they would be, and will cause weird, small jumps, expecially if you are trying to turn and your rotation is set back to an older value. If you send a weapon packet, you force the user to shot a weapon on their own screen, but at no energy loss and no item used (ie: thors won't decrease their thor count).

Mr Ekted - Thu May 18, 2006 10:37 pm
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My guess is that this is a bug--not a feature--in the client that allows this. You wouldn't normally expect the server to send position/weapon packets for yourself.

Animate Dreams - Thu May 18, 2006 11:34 pm
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Who cares, as long as it works.

Mine GO BOOM - Fri May 19, 2006 12:03 am
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Mr Ekted wrote:

My guess is that this is a bug--not a feature--in the client that allows this. You wouldn't normally expect the server to send position/weapon packets for yourself.

No, I expect it as a feature. To keep game code organized, usually input/output is its own section of code, while the handling of physics is another chunk, and the whole network interface is its own. Thus, the player data is keep like any other player's data, just with more information. The data doesn't care how it gets updated information, be it the input section saying "thursters on" or the networking code saying "you are now here."

You are correct in assuming that you would never expect the server to send information about you to you, but the way it is handled is correct with current design ideas being thrown around with game engines, be it Unreal, Halflife, or Continuum.

Mr Ekted - Fri May 19, 2006 1:08 am
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I understand that it is the most efficient to simply keep "self" in the same array as all the other players, and to just drop in whatever data the server sends for whatever player, including self. But I doubt it was the intent of the design to specifically allow that. It's more likely you just never test for self because the server should never send it.

Grelminar - Fri May 19, 2006 8:12 pm
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Anyway, there are two things that make this "feature" much less useful than it could be: first, after you force a position on to a player like this, it screws up something in cont's timing, and causes weapons and things to be a bit "off" for that player. Sometimes more, sometimes less. I've tried a few tweaks of the time field in the forced packet, but nothing seems to get rid of the "offness".

Second, you only seem to be able to set position and speed, not bounty, energy, and specials, which would be very useful for certain game types.

The fact that it screws up timing, and is limited to only certain fields rather than everything possible, support ek's theory that it's a bug and not a designed feature. And the fact that if you were (intelligently) designing a feature to let the server finely control players' positions, you'd have separate packets for position/velocity, bounty, energy, and specials, so that the server can set one without affecting the others.

Cyan~Fire - Sat May 20, 2006 12:12 pm
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Grelminar wrote:

first, after you force a position on to a player like this, it screws up something in cont's timing, and causes weapons and things to be a bit "off" for that player. Sometimes more, sometimes less. I've tried a few tweaks of the time field in the forced packet, but nothing seems to get rid of the "offness".

What happens if you do a standard warp first and then the position packet override thing?

Dr Brain - Sun May 21, 2006 8:00 pm
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I would have chimed in sooner, but I was out of the country with no internet access.

Be assured we've already tried that and much more, Cyan. Only thing that works is leaving the arena.

Animate Dreams - Tue May 30, 2006 2:07 am
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You know, since this was moved from the other topic, my post makes me look like much more of an ass than it did before. I want to add that originally, we were talking about me trying to use these things, so Ek's post seemed to me like a suggestion not to use those things because they weren't meant to be used that way.
And something confuses me. On my About, it says you helped program Continuum, Ekted. I'm not trying to say you should know more about this, but I would've thought you would know for sure whether it was a bug or a feature?

Smong - Tue May 30, 2006 7:50 am
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Ekted wrote the frontend for continuum. Besides continuum is a clone of subspace, which neither ekted or priitk designed or wrote.

Bak - Tue May 30, 2006 10:06 am
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something I always wondered was whether priitk wrote continuum from scratch, or whether he used parts of subspace (the asm, not the graphics, idiot) to help him out.

Dr Brain - Tue May 30, 2006 10:41 am
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If I were a guessing man, I would say he probably didn't write it from scratch.