Welcome To Cornertrap "You Can't Escape"ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO USwww.cornertrap.com Articles > Net Play Net Play 12-June-2002 - Heat & Tigerbones Approximately ten years ago PC gamers began to use their Internet connections to play online games. Though these numbers were small the online ball had started to roll. Today PC online gaming has turned into a big industry with major tournaments boasting four figure cash prizes. The consoles however are still behind the PC in terms of online games, but may soon take to the lead with the launch of the next generation consoles. Street Fighter being an arcade/console game, playing online doesn’t seem like it’ll happen anytime soon, but it is already here. Playing Street Fighter online versus someone thousands of miles away is no longer a fantasy. Within the last year this online dream is being lived by many players around the world, thanks to emulators and decreasing broadband prices. The most common online server is Kaillera. Kaillera is the main server that keeps a list of all other public servers. A player would load up Kaillera and a list of servers would appear. In these servers other players maybe waiting for you for a game of Street Fighter or any other game currently emulated. If you haven’t experienced throwing a fireball on the Internet, this may sound too good to be true. The answer is yes and no, it all comes down to your ping. Ping is the measurement in milliseconds (ms) for the amount of time it takes for a packet of information to be sent and returned from another computer. The lower the ping the more responsive your controls will be. An acceptable ping would be any number under 40ms. You may think 40ms (4 thousandths second) is an extremely short amount of time and it wouldn’t make any difference to the game, but any higher than this then you cannot instantly react to actions on screen. Ping is not the only factor that will affect online play. To accommodate different ping times Kaillera lets you set your inputs per frame. Most games run at a refresh rate of 60 frames per second. This does not necessarily mean that the game is animated at 60fps Eg.3D games like Tekken and Virtua Fighter. It means the screen is being refreshed at 60fps and your controls are registered 60 times a second. Kaillera gives you an option of 60fps, 30fps, 20fps and 10fps. The lower the fps the less responsive the controls. If your ping is not low enough and you set the fps too high then the game speed will start to slow down. To get even more technical I have worked out the equation for the exact number of lagged frames. The formula is: 60/kaillera fps * 60/1000 * ping = No. of lagged frames In the given situation of 40 ping playing on 30fps the maths would be 60/30 * 60/1000 * 40 = 4.8 frames = ~ 5 lagged frames In reality this would fluctuate depending on internet traffic. To give you an indication of how long 5 frames is, here is a bit of A-Ryu's frame data for SFA3. MoveFrame Data stand Jab 347 crouch Jab 347 crouch Strong 4412 close Fierce 4526 stand Short 5412 crouch Forward 4315 stand Roundhouse 10320 close Roundhouse 63326 crouch Roundhouse 5631 fierce Dragon Punch42243 fierce Fireball 1247 Lev 3 Super Fireball 4544 The first number is the start up frames, the second number is the active hit frames, the final number is the recovery frames. Now if you add an extra 5 start up frames to each of the above moves you will see how lag affects the game. A jab will now have 8 start up frames before it is active, the Dragon Punch will have 9 start up frames and so will the crouch forward. These 3 moves are meant to be near instant and they are approaching stand Roundhouse speed, a move that is considered to be slow. Capcom did not design the game to be played like this and in terms of tactics some moves are now alot weaker where as some have become alot stronger. Here are a few examples: Near instant moves like the Dragon Punch are no longer instant and require more fore thought to be effectively used as an anti-air. Because of this, Zangief's splash, a very powerful move without the lag, is now very dominating online. The ability to instantly react to your opponents attack is now gone. As you can see lag can really slow down your reactions, however, lag does not affect execution of combos as much. Your combos will just start up slower. So if execution is nearly the same but the response has decreased, how does this affect mind games? Zangief's SPD has always had a mind game based around it. The tick SPD game is the most common one. When Zangief is crouch jabbing you, you have to guess when he will stop jabbing and do a SPD grab. If you guess correctly and jump his SPD will whiff, if you guess wrong his next jab will hit you. Playing with lag you can only escape if you jump in advance, otherwise if you jump as Zangief finishes the jab, the jump will not register and you will stay grounded until the lag has finished. By that time you probably have been grabbed. The same thing happens with Adon and his Jaguar Tooth. In real life where the issue of lag doesn’t exist you have time to prepare yourself for the Jaguar Tooth whatever kick button is used, you can judge the trajectory immediately after Adon’s descent and anti air, block, or avoid the move as you see fit. But online you can be hindered by lag to such an extent that any attempt of an anti air will leave you with a kick to the jaw wondering why your usually perfect execution has failed you. In order to survive such moves online often tactics and counters you wouldn’t normally use to stop such a move must be employed. Another example of lag affecting gameplay is Chun Li and her throws. In real life her throws are quick affective and hard to counter but still a big risk for her to repeat. When you add lag to this equation you will often find that a Chun Li player can throw you over and over again as you cannot time the counter you would usually use properly and again you are forced to adapt to the online rule. Blanka and V-Akuma also have moves that can really be abused online such as Blanka’s fierce roll into electricity traps. In real life Blanka’s rolls are fast. In fact you will rarely see a Blanka roll countered with anything but a jab from anywhere closer then medium range. A good Blanka offline knows how and when to use those rolls online. It can be almost impossible to counter the roll conventionally like you would in real life and you can actually find that with lag you cannot block the roll even though you see it a full screen away and add to this the electricity follow up to counter a flip plus lag and you will find that even the most basic of traps can have you in trouble sometimes when you playing with a high or even medium level of lag. A and V akuma can use the dive kick to absolutely devastating effect to most people this is the single most difficult special move in the entire game to counter in real life, if it’s used right the Akuma player will have a very high rate of success with it. Now when you put this move into a world it wasn’t intended for where lag is apparent you have a veritable nightmare on your hands, add to this V ism lagged combos which are literally un-blockable and do massive damage and you have a character who was already a monster becoming an online god. In summation we have his un-blockable V ism combos that every one knows about in real life, The only way to escape them is with an exceptionally timed alpha counter. Online however, adding lag to the equation, it becomes virtually impossible to time your alpha counter and more often then not you will be dragged into the tide of the v-ism combo being used. So whether you play soley online or offline, do not presume that what stuff you know will help you when you crossover to your respective differential. Believe me you may be able to rack up wins online thanks to certain abuse of moves or tactics. But if you go down your local arcade you will more then likely find that 70% of your tactics won’t work there - this isn’t to say you are a poor player it simply means you must adapt to the world of total consistency that is presented to you. You will get no help from lag at all off line and that is hard thing to get used to. You cannot say roll five times into your opponent and catch him out the last two times thanks to a sudden burst of lag. You will find that his counters will remain totally consistent for every roll you do. Vice Versa an arcade player used to his counters working 100% of the time will find those rules turned on their head when he saunters into the Kaillera world thinking he will own them with his arcade skills. Online a player who would usually rely on his reflexes offline to totally pressurise his opponent will find that with lag his eyes will deceive him. He won’t be able to play like he does offline due to lag and packets etc. And at first frustration can set in, but with a slight adjustment and realisation that he cannot rely on what he did offline he can find himself a suitable way to get some matches in. All in all both sets of players can gain something from experiencing the others world. 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