Seeing snipers in videos like that make me wonder if I've been going about playing sniper all wrong. What with my "actually trying to aim at people's heads" strategy...
Just because we don't have any sentry guns built, does not mean you should spend seven minutes rushing the point just to edge it all the way. 9 out of 10 of the people you threw at the point have just died, change of tactics perhaps?
I actually pulled that on someone tonight but they didn't speak english so it was a complete miss. Playing Left 4 Dead some French guy kept calling me 'Mr Bing. Mr Bing. You asshole!'
Seeing snipers in videos like that make me wonder if I've been going about playing sniper all wrong. What with my "actually trying to aim at people's heads" strategy...
Seriosuly, the headshot on the scout was the best because I don't think his dot ever went near the Scouts head.
Seeing snipers in videos like that make me wonder if I've been going about playing sniper all wrong. What with my "actually trying to aim at people's heads" strategy...
Seriosuly, the headshot on the scout was the best because I don't think his dot ever went near the Scouts head.
And people wonder why I get so fucking frustrated trying to play sniper. Now, after the whole Billy Mitchel thing, I start thinking every really good sniper I see is just using an aimbot.
I still think that's a lie. The few times I play sniper I miss headshots I know I got and sometimes am rewarded with headshots I know I missed completely.
Either it's a DX8-based bug no one thinks about or people lie to me about how hitscan weapons work in TF2.
Teach me to headshot!
And voting for dustbowl should load up meleebarn instead. I'm rubbing all of my nipples just thinking about it.
I still think that's a lie. The few times I play sniper I miss headshots I know I got and sometimes am rewarded with headshots I know I missed completely.
Either it's a DX8-based bug no one thinks about or people lie to me about how hitscan weapons work in TF2.
Teach me to headshot!
And voting for dustbowl should load up meleebarn instead. I'm rubbing all of my nipples just thinking about it.
Lag compensation is far from perfect and will screw up. That doesn't mean that the guy in the video wasn't aiming for their heads, though, as some people seemed to believe was the case.
I still think that's a lie. The few times I play sniper I miss headshots I know I got and sometimes am rewarded with headshots I know I missed completely.
Either it's a DX8-based bug no one thinks about or people lie to me about how hitscan weapons work in TF2.
Teach me to headshot!
And voting for dustbowl should load up meleebarn instead. I'm rubbing all of my nipples just thinking about it.
How many of them?
When is this update coming out? Probably after Friday when I start my vacation. They released the Heavy update when I was in the middle of Maine, trying fruitlessly to read details via my phone's web browser.
Yeah, the lag comp in TF2 isn't entirely accurate, though it's pretty good for server-side. A lot of the trouble some people have with playing scout is that his speed exacerbates the inaccuracies, so they end up shooting well behind where they should, even though they're aiming where the model is on their screen.
I still think that's a lie. The few times I play sniper I miss headshots I know I got and sometimes am rewarded with headshots I know I missed completely.
Either it's a DX8-based bug no one thinks about or people lie to me about how hitscan weapons work in TF2.
Teach me to headshot!
And voting for dustbowl should load up meleebarn instead. I'm rubbing all of my nipples just thinking about it.
It's a pretty damn long read, but it explains why these things happen.
Basically, the server is the Boss. It's running a simulation of the world. When it receives inputs from clients (i.e. players) it updates its simulation of the world to reflect these inputs: someone has moved, someone got shot, etc. Remember, the server is Boss, what it says is going on in the world is official. At the same time, each client is running it's own simulation of the world. This is so when you move and shoot, it doesn't seem like there's any lag (even though there always is lag). This is called client prediction: your guy is moving, shooting, etc. and it looks like it's actually happening all in real time, but it's NOT. It's merely your simulation of the world predicting what things would look like if the Boss server accepts your changes to the world.
The issues arise when we're dealing with many users, all with different latencies, making changes to the world. How does the server decide who's changes to accept? It uses a Clock. Every client simulation also uses the clock, but due to latencies not all clocks are synchronized. That's ok because of lag compensation. So to use the headshot example, you shoot at a guy. Your game sends to the Boss server: at time 387231 I was standing a XYZ spot and shot my rifle at ABC spot. Boss server says, ok, lets rewind the clocks and see what was happening at time 387231. According to me there was some poor sap's head at ABC so I award you a headshot.
Maybe on your screen in your simulation, due to your client side prediction, the guy's head wasn't actually there. But according to the Boss, whose simulation is the law, he was there and totally got shot in the face. And of course the opposite could happen for shots that you know you totally made :?
It is this networking / lag compensation design that means there aren't any actual hitscan weapons in TF2. In a perfect no lag environment these guns would basically be the same as hitscan weapons, but they technically are not.
I still think that's a lie. The few times I play sniper I miss headshots I know I got and sometimes am rewarded with headshots I know I missed completely.
Either it's a DX8-based bug no one thinks about or people lie to me about how hitscan weapons work in TF2.
Teach me to headshot!
And voting for dustbowl should load up meleebarn instead. I'm rubbing all of my nipples just thinking about it.
It's a pretty damn long read, but it explains why these things happen.
Basically, the server is the Boss. It's running a simulation of the world. When it receives inputs from clients (i.e. players) it updates its simulation of the world to reflect these inputs: someone has moved, someone got shot, etc. Remember, the server is Boss, what it says is going on in the world is official. At the same time, each client is running it's own simulation of the world. This is so when you move and shoot, it doesn't seem like there's any lag (even though there always is lag). This is called client prediction: your guy is moving, shooting, etc. and it looks like it's actually happening all in real time, but it's NOT. It's merely your simulation of the world predicting what things would look like if the Boss server accepts your changes to the world.
The issues arise when we're dealing with many users, all with different latencies, making changes to the world. How does the server decide who's changes to accept? It uses a Clock. Every client simulation also uses the clock, but due to latencies not all clocks are synchronized. That's ok because of lag compensation. So to use the headshot example, you shoot at a guy. Your game sends to the Boss server: at time 387231 I was standing a XYZ spot and shot my rifle at ABC spot. Boss server says, ok, lets rewind the clocks and see what was happening at time 387231. According to me there was some poor sap's head at ABC so I award you a headshot.
Maybe on your screen in your simulation, due to your client side prediction, the guy's head wasn't actually there. But according to the Boss, whose simulation is the law, he was there and totally got shot in the face. And of course the opposite could happen for shots that you know you totally made :?
It is this networking / lag compensation design that means there aren't any actual hitscan weapons in TF2. In a perfect no lag environment these guns would basically be the same as hitscan weapons, but they technically are not.
Excellent explanation, sir!
You know, one thing that's interesting is facestabs. I'm getting much better at pulling them off. It's hard to describe exactly how it happens... It's just sort of - I'm looking at the guy, he's running towards me, and somehow I know he's going to run past me, so I swipe my knife at his face in a 180 turn to the right, and a backstab registers. Maybe I've learned that the Boss server sometimes places people just a couple feet in front of where they actually are on my screen, and I've intuitively learned how to use this fact to my advantage? Or something?
I guess my questions are as such: What do good snipers aim for? Right on the head? Do they lead? Do they lead a variable amount based on their own latency?
The whole sniping experience feels very inconsistent to me so I pretty much gave up on them. This sucks because it's one less class I ever play. I would love to figure this out but it feels so random to me. You can't reinforce random behavior without looking the fool!
Server concludes your target is facing away from you at a specific time, which means if you backstab at that moment, you get a kill.
Along those lines with buggy backstabs, I think I noticed the other night you can't be backstabbed while bonked, as long as you keep the camera pointed towards the spy. We were doing a melee-only thing on HONC Friday night, and scouts kept throwing baseballs around. Spy would try to take advantage, but he wasn't getting backstabs even though he was clearly behind my character.
I guess my questions are as such: What do good snipers aim for? Right on the head? Do they lead? Do they lead a variable amount based on their own latency?
The whole sniping experience feels very inconsistent to me so I pretty much gave up on them. This sucks because it's one less class I ever play. I would love to figure this out but it feels so random to me. You can't reinforce random behavior without looking the fool!
It seems like with the above information you should aim for the head. But playing on a PA server can be frustrating when we have so many people with either super-low pings or super-high pings. I think it turns "just missed but the server gave it to him" into "holy shit he was in spawn on my killcam."
I guess my questions are as such: What do good snipers aim for? Right on the head? Do they lead? Do they lead a variable amount based on their own latency?
The whole sniping experience feels very inconsistent to me so I pretty much gave up on them. This sucks because it's one less class I ever play. I would love to figure this out but it feels so random to me. You can't reinforce random behavior without looking the fool!
It seems like with the above information you should aim for the head. But playing on a PA server can be frustrating when we have so many people with either super-low pings or super-high pings. I think it turns "just missed but the server gave it to him" into "holy shit he was in spawn on my killcam."
Just use the huntsman. Super easy hit detection means as long as you can put an arrow in the general vicinity of someone at the right time, you'll hit them.
I think most of the good snipers on the PA server are more about predicting behavior than being gods of sniping. They know where someone's head will be when they come around a corner, and are ready to click off a shot as soon as they see movement. Or they know where people will be running in a straight line, giving better odds of a hit.
From what I can tell, relatively few snipers in TF2 do a lot of shoot-from-the-hip style play. They all plan where they want to be and basically let people walk into their bullets. It helps that TF2 map design facilitates this style of play.. compared to, say, Halo, where quick reactions and no-scopes are pretty highly regarded.
I guess my questions are as such: What do good snipers aim for? Right on the head? Do they lead? Do they lead a variable amount based on their own latency?
The whole sniping experience feels very inconsistent to me so I pretty much gave up on them. This sucks because it's one less class I ever play. I would love to figure this out but it feels so random to me. You can't reinforce random behavior without looking the fool!
So the correct answer would be that if lag compensation works as it's supposed to, you wouldn't have to do any leading or trailing whatsoever.
Obviously it doesn't, but unfortunately it doesn't consistently error. So each situation is basically unique, sometimes you should lead, sometimes you should trail, sometimes lag compensation works as advertised. It's pretty much impossible to know what the case is.
In practice though, as long as your ping isn't too high and you aren't going exclusively for scouts running around 3ft in front of you, lag compensation shouldn't be that wonky...
It averages out. For every bullshit kill the game gives you, someone else will get a bullshit kill on you.
At least it seems to be fair, which is more than can be said for most other online shooters. Back in the day when everyone was still on modems and I had a T3 at my disposal, the nerd rage sent my way was epic.
If you really want to know how the netcode works, go here and don't come back until you can explain net_graph with all those damn colors and dots and what it all means in English.
It averages out. For every bullshit kill the game gives you, someone else will get a bullshit kill on you.
At least it seems to be fair, which is more than can be said for most other online shooters. Back in the day when everyone was still on modems and I had a T3 at my disposal, the nerd rage sent my way was epic.
Fucking LPB's. :x
PMAvers on
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
It averages out. For every bullshit kill the game gives you, someone else will get a bullshit kill on you.
At least it seems to be fair, which is more than can be said for most other online shooters. Back in the day when everyone was still on modems and I had a T3 at my disposal, the nerd rage sent my way was epic.
Fucking LPB's. :x
It was the last time I was any good at FPS!
Most people could divide their ping by 10 and still have a ping bigger than mine.
I really wish I had a demo of the swing-a-knife-into-a-crowd-and-kill-no-one moment on Dustbowl a couple weeks back. Seriously, you can't stab shit at 5 fps.
I really wish I had a demo of the swing-a-knife-into-a-crowd-and-kill-no-one moment on Dustbowl a couple weeks back. Seriously, you can't stab shit at 5 fps.
But recording the demo would have slowed the game down further? Then you would be relying on your blind sense of direction and timing.
There should be a way to make Team Fortress look like Dwarf Fortress for those with crap computers or who want to play on phones.
I really wish I had a demo of the swing-a-knife-into-a-crowd-and-kill-no-one moment on Dustbowl a couple weeks back. Seriously, you can't stab shit at 5 fps.
But recording the demo would have slowed the game down further? Then you would be relying on your blind sense of direction and timing.
There should be a way to make Team Fortress look like Dwarf Fortress for those with crap computers or who want to play on phones.
I usually have a ping around 60-80 and I've had times where I shot maybe 8 feet in front of a scout on accident (while he was running perpendicular to where I am aiming) and got a head shot. I was really surprised because I usually miss scouts unless they are running straight at me.
Melchior I'm going to have to try the face stab thing....that sounds....devious. BUWHAHAHA
CommunistCow on
No, I am not really communist. Yes, it is weird that I use this name.
I really wish I had a demo of the swing-a-knife-into-a-crowd-and-kill-no-one moment on Dustbowl a couple weeks back. Seriously, you can't stab shit at 5 fps.
But recording the demo would have slowed the game down further? Then you would be relying on your blind sense of direction and timing.
There should be a way to make Team Fortress look like Dwarf Fortress for those with crap computers or who want to play on phones.
I was especially impressed by the way he used enemy rockets to launch himself over to the soldier shooting them.
He has a pyro rocket jumping practice script in the info of that video that i've tried using before. I only spent maybe 30 minutes on it and it was really friken hard to get the height and forward motion that he was getting. Also be warned that on the practice script you are on your own local server so you have to deal with lag when doing this on a regular server. I noticed I have to CB the rockets a little earlier on PA than I had to with that practice script.
CommunistCow on
No, I am not really communist. Yes, it is weird that I use this name.
Posts
lies!
you run a filthy server where some power hungry admin changes the gravity!
we don't want those kinds of shenanigans!
most of all, most of all
someone said true love was dead
but i'm bound to fall
bound to fall for you
oh what can i do
Just because we don't have any sentry guns built, does not mean you should spend seven minutes rushing the point just to edge it all the way. 9 out of 10 of the people you threw at the point have just died, change of tactics perhaps?
I actually pulled that on someone tonight but they didn't speak english so it was a complete miss. Playing Left 4 Dead some French guy kept calling me 'Mr Bing. Mr Bing. You asshole!'
dead.
Tofu wrote: Here be Littleboots, destroyer of threads and master of drunkposting.
We should all go play Batman instead.
when can we expect to at least hear about the next one?
There was two months between most of the updates. There was three months between Scout and Sniper vs. Spy. TF2.com lists the exact release dates.
Seriosuly, the headshot on the scout was the best because I don't think his dot ever went near the Scouts head.
Sometimes I Stream Games: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/italax-plays-video-games
And people wonder why I get so fucking frustrated trying to play sniper. Now, after the whole Billy Mitchel thing, I start thinking every really good sniper I see is just using an aimbot.
Either it's a DX8-based bug no one thinks about or people lie to me about how hitscan weapons work in TF2.
Teach me to headshot!
And voting for dustbowl should load up meleebarn instead. I'm rubbing all of my nipples just thinking about it.
Lag compensation is far from perfect and will screw up. That doesn't mean that the guy in the video wasn't aiming for their heads, though, as some people seemed to believe was the case.
How many of them?
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Latency_Compensating_Methods_in_Client/Server_In-game_Protocol_Design_and_Optimization
It's a pretty damn long read, but it explains why these things happen.
Basically, the server is the Boss. It's running a simulation of the world. When it receives inputs from clients (i.e. players) it updates its simulation of the world to reflect these inputs: someone has moved, someone got shot, etc. Remember, the server is Boss, what it says is going on in the world is official. At the same time, each client is running it's own simulation of the world. This is so when you move and shoot, it doesn't seem like there's any lag (even though there always is lag). This is called client prediction: your guy is moving, shooting, etc. and it looks like it's actually happening all in real time, but it's NOT. It's merely your simulation of the world predicting what things would look like if the Boss server accepts your changes to the world.
The issues arise when we're dealing with many users, all with different latencies, making changes to the world. How does the server decide who's changes to accept? It uses a Clock. Every client simulation also uses the clock, but due to latencies not all clocks are synchronized. That's ok because of lag compensation. So to use the headshot example, you shoot at a guy. Your game sends to the Boss server: at time 387231 I was standing a XYZ spot and shot my rifle at ABC spot. Boss server says, ok, lets rewind the clocks and see what was happening at time 387231. According to me there was some poor sap's head at ABC so I award you a headshot.
Maybe on your screen in your simulation, due to your client side prediction, the guy's head wasn't actually there. But according to the Boss, whose simulation is the law, he was there and totally got shot in the face. And of course the opposite could happen for shots that you know you totally made :?
It is this networking / lag compensation design that means there aren't any actual hitscan weapons in TF2. In a perfect no lag environment these guns would basically be the same as hitscan weapons, but they technically are not.
Excellent explanation, sir!
You know, one thing that's interesting is facestabs. I'm getting much better at pulling them off. It's hard to describe exactly how it happens... It's just sort of - I'm looking at the guy, he's running towards me, and somehow I know he's going to run past me, so I swipe my knife at his face in a 180 turn to the right, and a backstab registers. Maybe I've learned that the Boss server sometimes places people just a couple feet in front of where they actually are on my screen, and I've intuitively learned how to use this fact to my advantage? Or something?
I don't know.
The whole sniping experience feels very inconsistent to me so I pretty much gave up on them. This sucks because it's one less class I ever play. I would love to figure this out but it feels so random to me. You can't reinforce random behavior without looking the fool!
Server concludes your target is facing away from you at a specific time, which means if you backstab at that moment, you get a kill.
Along those lines with buggy backstabs, I think I noticed the other night you can't be backstabbed while bonked, as long as you keep the camera pointed towards the spy. We were doing a melee-only thing on HONC Friday night, and scouts kept throwing baseballs around. Spy would try to take advantage, but he wasn't getting backstabs even though he was clearly behind my character.
It seems like with the above information you should aim for the head. But playing on a PA server can be frustrating when we have so many people with either super-low pings or super-high pings. I think it turns "just missed but the server gave it to him" into "holy shit he was in spawn on my killcam."
Just use the huntsman. Super easy hit detection means as long as you can put an arrow in the general vicinity of someone at the right time, you'll hit them.
I think most of the good snipers on the PA server are more about predicting behavior than being gods of sniping. They know where someone's head will be when they come around a corner, and are ready to click off a shot as soon as they see movement. Or they know where people will be running in a straight line, giving better odds of a hit.
From what I can tell, relatively few snipers in TF2 do a lot of shoot-from-the-hip style play. They all plan where they want to be and basically let people walk into their bullets. It helps that TF2 map design facilitates this style of play.. compared to, say, Halo, where quick reactions and no-scopes are pretty highly regarded.
So the correct answer would be that if lag compensation works as it's supposed to, you wouldn't have to do any leading or trailing whatsoever.
Obviously it doesn't, but unfortunately it doesn't consistently error. So each situation is basically unique, sometimes you should lead, sometimes you should trail, sometimes lag compensation works as advertised. It's pretty much impossible to know what the case is.
In practice though, as long as your ping isn't too high and you aren't going exclusively for scouts running around 3ft in front of you, lag compensation shouldn't be that wonky...
At least it seems to be fair, which is more than can be said for most other online shooters. Back in the day when everyone was still on modems and I had a T3 at my disposal, the nerd rage sent my way was epic.
Fucking LPB's. :x
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
It was the last time I was any good at FPS!
Most people could divide their ping by 10 and still have a ping bigger than mine.
I really wish I had a demo of the swing-a-knife-into-a-crowd-and-kill-no-one moment on Dustbowl a couple weeks back. Seriously, you can't stab shit at 5 fps.
But recording the demo would have slowed the game down further? Then you would be relying on your blind sense of direction and timing.
There should be a way to make Team Fortress look like Dwarf Fortress for those with crap computers or who want to play on phones.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_Garrison_2
Also I hereby crown Savoo as king of facestabs.
Melchior I'm going to have to try the face stab thing....that sounds....devious. BUWHAHAHA
Good to see Darren Gladstone still up there.
He has a pyro rocket jumping practice script in the info of that video that i've tried using before. I only spent maybe 30 minutes on it and it was really friken hard to get the height and forward motion that he was getting. Also be warned that on the practice script you are on your own local server so you have to deal with lag when doing this on a regular server. I noticed I have to CB the rockets a little earlier on PA than I had to with that practice script.