Hitboxes

[hitboxx]

I've been watching the forums for a long time now and always wondered about one thing: You guys complain about anything and everything, bad community, unbalanced game, glitches, bugs, exploits etc.

But theres one thing I was always missing: A thread about the hitboxes of the game. (and yes, this is why I signed up).

They are bad. Not much worse than in other games, but in L4D2 they're way more important than in TF2 for example. Why? Because of deadstops, skeets, levels and smoker tongue cuts. Those things require really good timing, and if a player has a bad ping, different network settings or is lagging, you mess up.

This is pretty much the only thing that annoys me in L4D2.

[FapJak]

Well uhhh I dont see what can be done if have bad ping. You can always tweak lerp setting the way you like your hitboxes but you need constant green ping to learn to execute deadstops.

[Mister.D]

Changing lerp and any other network settings DOES NOT alter how hitboxes work in the game.

Anyone that knows how the source engine mechanics works, knows that.

Hitboxes are even screwed up even in Single player and Lan games with 0 ping.

And its all because of the mechanics of how the Hitbox and visible player geometry are separate entities.

All physical collisions, meaning Hit-rays from melee, hitbox vs hitbox collisions (si pounces, charge, smoker tongue), and objects like tank rocks, Props like cars, dumpsters, Forklifts, even propane and gastanks, ONLY REACT TO THE HITBOX, which is INVISIBLE.

The visible player and props follow behind any entity with a hitbox, like its on a rubberband, and is only a visual representation of that Hitbox.

The only thing in Source games that does react directly to the visible geometry, are bullets, because they're laser like and recorded by hitscan.

Want to fix the game, and have it play much more reliably?

Convince valve to synchronize the hitbox and player geometry, instead of this interpolated garbage.

[john_volkov]

Originally Posted by henrikhe

i don't know how the source engine works, but i have read the valve documents about how lerp works in this game and changing lerp does make it easier to deadstop, since what you see is closer to the hitbox. it doesn't make it perfect tho, but i don't have enough imagination to come up with something that can do anything about lag. tank punches also react directly to the visible geometry, hence why tanks get long arms with high lerp or high ping.

Have you ever played with Lerp 0 ? Having low lerp with low ping helps a lot.

The hitscan are preaty good they have there flaws but still works 80% of the time.

I don't think there is any game that has perfect hitscans.

[Diocletian]

Originally Posted by Mister.D

Convince valve to synchronize the hitbox and player geometry, instead of this interpolated garbage.

Personally, I think this issue causes just as much ragequitting as the lack of matchmaking issue because the fact that people don't know that this is how things are is what causes a lot of the mistakes that people get kicked for.

Ultimately, the blame for this game's lackluster community is squarely on Valve, but people prefer to fight with each other on these forums instead of making EVERY SINGLE THREAD about what a bad job Valve is doing on a game that has been around since 2009.

[hitboxx]

Originally Posted by john_volkov

Have you ever played with Lerp 0 ? Having low lerp with low ping helps a lot.

The hitscan are preaty good they have there flaws but still works 80% of the time.

I don't think there is any game that has perfect hitscans.

Too bad valve has disabled several lerp settings. 16.7 is the lowest you can go in combination with a 100/100.
Standard should be:

cl_interp 0.06666
cl_interp_ratio 0
rate 30000
cl_updaterate 100
cl_cmdrate 100

Also lerps above 100 should be disabled.

Edit: Heres a great video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKKQmdRFIgY

[henrikhe]

Originally Posted by john_volkov

Have you ever played with Lerp 0 ? Having low lerp with low ping helps a lot.

The hitscan are preaty good they have there flaws but still works 80% of the time.

I don't think there is any game that has perfect hitscans.

did you read what i wrote? did you understand it? i have 0 lerp.

Originally Posted by hitboxx

Too bad valve has disabled several lerp settings. 16.7 is the lowest you can go in combination with a 100/100.
Standard should be:

cl_interp 0.06666
cl_interp_ratio 0
rate 30000
cl_updaterate 100
cl_cmdrate 100

Also lerps above 100 should be disabled.

Edit: Heres a great video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKKQmdRFIgY

that depends on the server. i mostly use 0 lerp, but on most servers it shows as 16.7. somethimes i change it to 33.3 when i lag more than usual.

standard lerp is 100 because valve wanted to game to be smooth for more players aka players with ♥♥♥♥ty connections

[shazzz]

Originally Posted by henrikhe

standard lerp is 100 because valve wanted to game to be smooth for more players aka players with ♥♥♥♥ty connections

Interp is 0.1 in all valve games by default for years (even cs 1.6), I don't think it's a conscious decision by Valve, but simply the default value for the cvar, and they never bother to change it.

[Berserker7]

nothing wrong with hitboxes, type ping in console and you will see that everyone on server has dial up.

everything is delayed by 33ms + lerp even in single player.

People who live very near the server get 66-80ms ping. Packet takes few ms to travel to server and back, but the server side and client side delays make everything seem like you playing game from 1997.

[Threesixtyci]

Oh look... another you guys thread.
All source games use the same system for hitboxes. It's got no chance of changing unless Valve creates a new Engine and even then, there is no guaranty that anything will change.

[henrikhe]

Originally Posted by shazzz

Interp is 0.1 in all valve games by default for years (even cs 1.6), I don't think it's a conscious decision by Valve, but simply the default value for the cvar, and they never bother to change it.

well, it was a conscious decision to set it to 0.1 when they set it and as far as i can see they either didn't think about changing it or they want that interpolation value to be that big cause some people still play on dial up. they seem to care about letting as many people as possible play their games. it's mostly speculations from our sides tho.

[Mister.D]

I don't think it would be hard for them to synchronize hitbox + geometry at all.

Hl2 didn't even have multiplay when it was first released, it was patched on later.

And if the interpolation is global and used by every source game, it would be even easier to fix every game using it.

[FapJak]

https://developer.valvesoftware.com/...yer_Networking

Scroll down to lag compensation read carefuly. No need to thank me.

[Mister.D]

Yeah I understand all the lerp stuff and how the netcode works, problem is melee and collision based attacks aren't compensated and it reacts directly with the invisible hitbox, not the visible geometry.

Only bullets react to geometry directly via hitscan.

Changing rates and interp settings doesn't alter in any way how the hitbox and visible geometry function together.

They stay seperated no matter what, the visible geometry will always lag behind the hitboxes.

Since L4d and any source game that uses melee attacks rely solely on hitbox vs hitbox collisions, its going to be a sloppy mess until they get locked together.

[Kaizoku]

Originally Posted by Mister.D

Yeah I understand all the lerp stuff and how the netcode works, problem is melee and collision based attacks aren't compensated and it reacts directly with the invisible hitbox, not the visible geometry.

Only bullets react to geometry directly via hitscan.

Changing rates and interp settings doesn't alter in any way how the hitbox and visible geometry function together.

They stay seperated no matter what, the visible geometry will always lag behind the hitboxes.

Since L4d and any source game that uses melee attacks rely solely on hitbox vs hitbox collisions, its going to be a sloppy mess until they get locked together.

This. Most of the strategy revolving around the hunter is to abuse the airaccelerate function of the source engine to de-sync your hitbox so that it hits in front of you by a lot on your screen and by a little on yours. While this can be a boon for hunters, it is the bane of existence for smokers and chargers as any time a survivor moves their hitbox is projected in that direction, nearly a full body length at full speed, and half of their model is totally dead of collision attacks. This makes the game really frustrating and visually inaccurate for the SI.

The solution would be a combination of keep hitscan lag compensated (bias for survivors here) but allowing SI attacks to be compensated as well (bias for SI here). Not sure how I feel about compensating survivor melee, as that *needs* to be really hard or deadstops/headshot melees/levels will become nearly 100%