Resolved - Can someone explain...

[Zorbanos 1st MRB]

Dillons config, pros and cons of it to me

I understand the basic concept of lerp, but how do you know what color you have? i guess i dont get the color system, red, yellow, white?

just installed dillons config and am trying to decide if i want to keep it, can tell yet how much it affects gameplay.

btw, for the record, i have a computer that is more than capable of running DoD:S at high levels, so maybe the config isnt changing much for me? Idk, not sure how all this jazz works.

[Englebretson 1st MRB]

It will really only help you if your computer sucks performance wise. Most of the stuff like lerp and rates are things that you dont need to worry about playing on our servers.

[Legend]

Can't Hurt!

[Magoo]

Type 'net_graph 1' in console and hit enter. That will let you see the values that you need to pay attention to in DoDS. The lerp value is defaulted at 100 ms and will approach 0 when Dillon's config is activated. If the lerp is set too low it will turn yellow. Just make sure that the lerp remains white.

Even if you have the best computer ever made you should use an auto config. There are some things in Dillon's config that someone with a great computer will not really benefit from, but on the whole it is a good config.

[Goodwin 1st MRB]

It will really only help you if your computer sucks performance wise. Most of the stuff like lerp and rates are things that you dont need to worry about playing on our servers.

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong - but lerp, interp, rates and that is more related to your internet speeds and adjustment of hitboxes dependent upon that. These settings are highly dependent upon your internet connection, how stable it is, if you're dropping packets, etc. So if you set them uber low and you are 'in the red' or have a lot of 'choke', you're in trouble. Everyone's PC is different for the most part with regards to these settings and they should be setup and tweaked dependent upon your machine, your connection, etc. Realistically? Stock will work just fine in most cases, but on the pro player portion of the spectrum it can help to tweak them in certain cases.

The rest of the config I believe maximizes settings that are (as Engle said) a huge performance gain for lesser PC's - although it will make the game run even easier on a high end machine (not that it really matters at that point).

You can read article after article about the lerp, rates and interp settings and the effect they can have on your gaming.

[Cutts]

tldr: If you're not interested in the technical shit, but just want to know how to set your rates, jump to the bottom of this post.

Here is some very in-depth knowledge explaining exactly what rates and lerp actually mean.

(Please remember to read all of this in a British accent.)

This response will be in two parts

1) What lerp is.

2) Stuff to do with updates from server to client.

3) Stuff to do with commands from client to server.

4) How to set rates properly.

(1) WHAT LERP IS

OK... so:

Lerp means "linear interpolation", which is a mathematical technique of smoothing out the game.

Lets say you had an update from the server 10ms ago, and you're about to render the current frame. The

client doesn't know where all the other players actually are, so it extrapolates from what they were doing

10ms ago, and makes its best guess on what they're doing now.

Now you receive the next update from the server, which tells you where the players actually are, and you

want to render the next frame. You *could* render exactly what you got from the server, but then that

would probably be a bit different from the predictions your client previously made, which would make

other players suddenly jump across the world a bit.

Instead, the game linearly interpolates over time... which means gradually transitioning the rendered position

between the predicted position to the updated position. The clients sees something pretty close to what is

happening on the server, but it is really a fudged approximation, to make bad connections appear smooth.

(2) SERVER UPDATES SENT TO CLIENT, and how they're handled (basically):

The rate value is the maximum number of bytes the server can send the client per second.

Ideally you want this fairly high, because if it is too low the server may well have updates to send which

it cannot, so you will end up getting delayed updates (called "choke"), and it might be a bit choppy.

The cl_updaterate value is how many updates your client wants the server to send it per second.

Default is 20 per second. That works out as an average of 50ms between updates. Higher is generally

better, so long as your connection (and, I guess, the server) can handle it.

The cl_interp value is a length of time... eg how long it will take to lerp from 100% predicted position to 100%

updated position. Ideally, that time should be the same as the average length of time between updates from

the server. So, a lerp of 0.05 (seconds) would be good.

HOWEVER, if a single update packet gets dropped, suddenly the lerping goes a bit wrong, so to allow for 1

going missing we double the lerp time to smooth over that. This gives us a default cl_interp value of 0.1.

The cl_interp_ratio is 1 plus the number of consecutive dropped packets you're prepared to handle.

Because we've doubled the lerp time, without halving the update rate, we need the engine to handle that properly

so we set the cl_interp_ratio value to 2, so it understands. If you have more packet loss to deal with you can

increase this ratio, but you will also have to adjust your cl_interp. If you never lose packets, you could reduce

your ratio to 1,

Therefore, these three values should be related like so:

cl_interp = cl_interp_ratio / cl_updaterate

(3) CLIENT COMMANDS SENT TO SERVER

OK. So there are other console variables which control the client commands, or "usrcmds".

cl_cmdrate is the number of command packets the client will try to send to the server.

Ideally, this should be as high as it can be, but shouldn't be higher than the tick-rate of the server, or you'll be

sending empty command packets. Too low and you'll have a load of commands all sent at once.

This isn't all that important however, so you can either leave it as it is, or set it to around-or-slightly-under the

servers tick rate. The fact is, that with the servers lag compensation, it doesn't really matter if you have a low

cl_cmdrate, because the server will account for when you actually fired and "fairly" kill your opponents retrospectively.

Setting it high is generally polite, however, as it decreases the amount of kill-delay other people experience.

E.g., to other people you'll appear to be shooting round corners less.

(4) HOW TO SET YOUR RATES PROPERLY

1) Pick your cl_updaterate setting.

20 is the standard, but theoretically you could go as high as the servers tick rate, usually either 66 or 100,

if you have a fast connection. Start off as high as you can (eg 66/100).

2) You should then pick a cl_interp_ratio, set to be "1 + how many packets you think might be likely dropped in a row".

2 is the standard. Use "net_graph 3" to bring up a network graph. Play for a bit, and look at the "loss" value. If that

starts to go above 1 too much, you might want a higher cl_interp_ratio.

3) ) Calculate your cl_interp using the following formula (0.1 is the standard):

cl_interp = cl_interp_ratio / cl_updaterate

3) You might want to add a little bit to your cl_interp, to allow for the occasionally slightly delayed packets.

So maybe use this formula instead, if you're getting very occasional judders in player movement.

cl_interp = 1.1 * (cl_interp_ratio / cl_updaterate)

4) Finally, whack your rate value up to about 50000. As far as I can tell, there is no real reason to ever reduce this,

so you might aswell have it high. Using net_graph 3, check if you're getting any "choke" (you ideally want choke to be 0).

If you are, you might need to increase your rate value.

...

5) Play the game. If it is not to your satisfaction, and you're getting packet loss, or it's too laggy, repeat 1-4

starting with a lower cl_updaterate.

...

6) Set cl_cmdrate to about your servers tickrate.

[Zorbanos 1st MRB]

Cutts, you're awesome

The specifics of this are a little over my head, might take me a while to figure out, but at least its all there. Thanks bud =)

[Cutts]

No problem dude.

Incidentally, this is a complex area, and there are a number of schools of thought on this... Theres some science, but there is also an art to it.

What I have described is from the point of view of a game developer trying to engineer a game as fairly as possible.

However, because of the unpredictability of internet traffic, and the differences in peoples machines, etc, valve allows the user to alter the

settings, potentially allowing people to gain some small advantage, so there may be other settings out there that works better for you, but

the above step-by-step plan should always give you a pretty good result.

[Zorbanos 1st MRB]

Yeah idk if any of this has actually changed my gameplay yet or given me a real advantage.

all i know is ive now properly installed dillons config (thanks to holland) and my lerp runs at .5 now =)