I came across an interesting post on a forum I frequent, regarding the Half-Life netcode:

Hit registration in HL games is a myth, its your latency.

 

HL games ( except for TF flavors ) use whats called “server authenticated shot registration” and here is how it works:

 

Server sends you relative positions of everyone around you.

You put your sight on their head.

Pull trigger.

Your client registers the hit and gives you blood splatter.

Your client sends the shot to the server.

The server looks at when it got the shot, compares it to where the server says that player is now.

Your target is not where you shot, discards the shot(took too long for your shot packet to reach server).

Server sends you new relative locations for everyone around you.

 

That’s what’s commonly called “server side shooting” and what the vast majority of online FPSes use. It is highly dependant upon your latency. Latency, not ping. Ping is a derivitive of latency, but ping is not latency.

 

Reg is a myth, its just shitty latency on your part.

 

Team Fortress flavors use what’s called “client side shooting with server authentication” and here is how it works:

 

Server sends you relative position of people around you.

You put crosshair on your target and pull trigger.

Your client registers the shot, sends it to server.

Server compares timestamp of your shot and where that player was when you shot.

If the server verifies that when you shot, they were under your crosshair, it gives you credit for the shot, target dies.

 

The 2nd is called “client side shooting” and is much more forgiveable with those with higher pings/latency than “server side shooting” setups. That’s why most people consider TF flavors easier to play, but its because of how they handle their shot mechanics.

 

That’s why the perception is those with a lower ping do much better, but it’s not about their ping, it’s their lower latency in a server side shooting game.

Of course this is from some random person on a random Internet forum, so I can’t guarantee the veracity of his claims, but it seems reasonable. NS seems to use the second method, what he calls “client side shooting with server authentication”, which would explain the infamous “sparks bug”. It also explains how you can get hit long after passing a corner, how shots that seemingly hit fail to do any damage and why that fucking LERK JUST WON’T FUCKING DIE FUCK. If this is true, some of us (ahem) should be feeling pretty embarassed by now.

So, is that it then? Is hit registration a myth? Have we been needlessly bashing Spanish connections and German rates? Is the notion of a German panzer just a mirage?