As the last season of ENSL has finished, at least the last season as far as 9L is concerned, it’s time for a quick recap. Once again, we were enticed to rejoin the dwindling Natural Selection community, for one last kaboom. At first I was skeptical, I doubted we’d even be able to get six 9Lers to return. I was wrong. It didn’t take long before old friends started mysteriously connecting to IRC and announcing their returns. How they knew we were even making a comeback, I will never know. After our miraculous Season 10 comeback, expectations were high. Too high. The competition was fierce and our chances slim, but we threw ourselves into the fray.

…mop’s back — HELL YEAH!? :D

ENSL Season 10 was a once in a lifetime event. So unlikely, so ridiculously unlikely, that I personally feel that expecting the same results this season — with even less time to practice — is strange. So many different and even in themselves unlikely events conspired to make that victory possible. I’d be surprised if anything like that ever happens again, to any team. Still, I can’t deny that I’m a little disappointed. Not with our results, they were quite decent considering our inactivity and short time to get back on form. I’m disappointed with the fact that we didn’t even really try. Still, playing without having any real ambitions was relaxing in its own way.

Cue five weeks of “wltrs gets a shotgun” predictions.

I must also take some of the blame for our mediocre performance. While I was able to effectuate some clever strategies, they were symptomatic of our condition. I’m not entirely sure why, but I just haven’t felt comfortable leading the team this season. As a result, my performance as team leader slumped. Badly. We used to be the most professionally organized NS team around, but this season we were one of the least. Poor motivating, in game leadership and roster management failed to give us the solid foundation we’ve had in the past. It could be time to recruit some new leadership talent — or maybe I just need a break?

Oetel decides to take justice in his own hands when sherpa jumps the CC.

That said, I still had a lot of fun playing and talking shit on vent. The screenshots in this news post don’t even come close to representing all the hilarious moments we had. Coming one red bar away from taking Saunamen to a tie breaker map in the semi final certainly isn’t anything to be ashamed of. Neither is taking a shared third place with take over. The rage levels were also almost non-existant, surprising considering our history of rage — even when we were winning! Big, big shoutout to b1, dux, evilness, JustMe, morphz, mu, Oetel, pantsu, sherpa, Sublime, vax, and wltrs for making our last NS tournament a very enjoyable one. See you around in NS2 yo!

Sublime eats nade, blames friends for “shouting in my ears”.

As this is the last time we’ll ever play NS together, let me take this opportunity to say thank you. Everyone. Thank you for all the matches, the great laughs and the camaraderie. Thank you for the memories.

9L has gone back into hibernation. Hopefully, we’ll be back for NS2, but the future is hard to predict. Some of us are still playing NS however, for different teams. Wltrs has joined the Tuxedo Men and I’m playing with take over. The community may be in a sorry state, but playing NS is still fun!

As the title says, this is a list of my top 10 favorite fragmovies. It follows, that I’ve made no attempt to use any sort of objective standards to pick the movies. This list is 99.9% subjective. While some of the descriptions include criteria that could be used objectively, they are not intended as such. They are simply attempts at describing the movies, not the reasoning behind their inclusion and positioning on the list.

1. VirtuositY by Liquide

Relatively unknown movie maker releases a movie and disappears. Who cares right? Well in this case, I do. I don’t know why he stopped making movies after releasing VirtuositY, but it’s a damned shame. Amazing editing — fragmovie porno even — and frags. I don’t even like most of the soundtrack, but I still get all funky watching it. That just proves how incredible it is. Picking and positioning the other movies was very difficult, but this is a no brainer.

Link to download

2. Mousesports 2008 by Michael Weicker

The grand daddy of Counter-Strike movies made a surprising comeback with this gem. Retracing his steps since the last Weicker bombshell in 2005, he once again collaborated with mousesports with astounding results. Jaw dropping visuals, superb frags and orgasmic syncing. This is it lads.

Link to download

3. Last Dinosaur 2 by APM

Team Fortress? You’re kidding right? Negative. This movie is so good; APM was picked up by Shaolin Productions shortly after releasing it. Nice syncing throughout, but what really makes this shine is the perfected use of what we can call “macro sync”. By that I mean syncing the flow of the video to the flow of the audio — as opposed to micro sync, which is syncing beats and other more “immediate” sounds to visual events. The content suffers from a bit of filler, but has a decent amount of jaw dropping action.

Link to download

4. Mercurial by ASHR

By the legendary Shaolin Productions. Perhaps less renowned than some of their other movies, like Tricking iT 2, but in my mind their best work. One of the visually sexiest movies ever, yet still manages to keep a superb level of sync and content focus throughout. A bit late to the psychedelic soundtrack party, but a good selection none the less.

Link to download

5. Mousesports by Michael Weicker

Weicker’s second movie on this list, and well deserved at that. Technically starting to look a bit dated, but the editing and action is still f-ing awesome. Watch out for the remarkable clutch blooper with commentary, it’s worth watching several times over.

Link to download

6. The Fellowship of NoA by Sebastien Poirier and Griffin Benger

Can’t really put my finger on why, but I’ve always held this in high regard. One of a select few movies improved by the addition of 3D rendered scenes.

Link to download

7. CastorFiber by cristal

Pure, unadulterated, visual pornography. To truly enjoy this movie and do it justice, you need a good monitor with properly calibrated colors.

Link to download

8. eoLithic tribute by Zaknafein

Zaknafein’s masterpiece, a proper old school movie. It still remains the only fragmovie that evokes not only happy feelings, but also sad ones. It’s a very old movie, and by todays standards it looks pretty bad. It more than makes up for any such deficiencies with an abundance of charm however.

Link to download

9. Clutch by Sam Pollach

Great concept, solid execution. The term “clutch” in Counter-Strike refers to when a player manages to win a round against seemingly impossible odds. This is a movie dedicated to such events. Some of the most amazing clutch-ings in the history of the game, with hilarious bloopers to boot. Proof that editing isn’t everything and content really does matter.

Link to download

10. Pubmasters by techwarrior

Uniquely entertaining. Featuring frags that are also bloopers at the same time, from the stunt team Pubmasters. Both impressive and hilarious at the same time. Don’t expect much in the way of editing though.

Link to download

Status: Finished

Match: 9L vs. Saunamen

Date: 13th of December 2009, 20:00 CET

Maps: ns_veil, ns_origin

9L: Fana, morphz, sherpa, Sublime, Pizza, wltrs

Saunamen: enigmatic, Kuitmo, leipa, Peacham, Talis, Tane, vartija

Result: 1 – 3

Downloads: HLTV demo

Recap

It was fun.

Preface

This should be fun.

This article was originally published on New Year’s Eve 2006. It was an attempt at summing up the events of the year in our small community, from my (Fana) point of view. I think it does a fairly decent job at that, so I’ve cleaned it up and reposted it for historical purposes.

It would’ve benefitted from some images and screenshots, but it’s a bit too late for that now. Reading it really does bring me back though. Memories!

Check it out!

Status: Finished

Match: 9L vs. Turning Point

Date: 6th of December 2009, 20:00 CET

Maps: ns_tanith, ns_eclipse

9L: dux, evilness, Fana, morphz, Oetel, sherpa

Turning Point: Air, Almaty, CoBvsCoF, kranky, LS, noway, Pyromatic

Result: 3 – 1

Downloads: HLTV demo

Recap

Another week in inactiveland. We managed to get evilness to step in at the last moment so we could actually play the match. Big thanks to him. This is a match I’d rather forget as soon as possible however. I don’t think I’ve ever played this bad… and I’ve played bad. Kudos to Turning Point for putting up a good fight though, it turned out to be a pretty exciting match, even though mostly for the wrong reasons. Groovy commanding from sherpa, safe lerking from Oetel and mop carried. GG.

Preface

On paper, this should be an easy 4-0 for us. However, we’ve been having some activity problems lately due to massive inactivity from certain players. Turning Point on the other hand have recently strengthened their roster by adding past UGO player macpersil to their roster. In addition, we may not have an actual comm for the match, as sherpa isn’t sure if he can play. b1 is busy making Christmas food and JustMe is — apparently — not playing with us anymore. Should be fun!

Status: Finished

Match: 9L vs. 250 de ping

Date: 29th of November 2009, 20:00 CET

Maps: ns_metal, ns_tanith

9L: dux, Fana, koetje, morphz, Pizza (vax), sherpa

250 de ping: BatraxJr, cond0r, CrovaX, fitoX, Herrsheimer, Hitman, Hudson, LaTOO, Snail

Result: 4 – 0

Downloads: HLTV demo

Recap

Fortunately Pizza was able to step in, as we were unable to field six from our regular roster. Embarrassing.

As expected, the high pings resulted in awkward gameplay. Nothing game changing however. 250 de ping put up stiff resistance on our metal alien and tanith marine especially, but we prevailed in the end. Our metal alien started out tragically bad. No teamplay and poor individual choices let them get a big early advantage. Morphz fortunately pulled out his oldschool fading skills and we managed to get the second hive up. They camped PGs and defended res until they had JPs and HAs, but once we managed to get the third hive building they had to push — that’s when we devastated their res and won the game. Split MOTM to sherpa and morphz for cool commanding and reliable fading.

Preface

Judging by the results so far, this should be an easy one for us. However, we’ve never played against this team and we don’t really know what to expect. Add to that the high pings, as Europe plays against Argentina on an American server, and suddenly there’s a volatile mixture in the pot.

It’s been a few weeks now, so it isn’t really news per se, but I thought I’d give a shoutout to wltrs and pizza (aka. växjo) — current and past 9L.ns players — who recently won a TF2 LAN tournament. Together with the rest of their team, Power Gaming, they claimed the top spot in the i38 TF2 tournament. It was a fairly high profile tournament with decent prizes and some e-rep on the line, so it’s nice achievement for them.

For those of you who don’t know, wltrs and Pizza have been playing TF2 at the highest level for a while now. After our ENSL season 10 comeback and subsequent fold, they created a TF2 team called coolclan with sherpa, Admirable, Altbst and several other familiar faces from NS. They eventually worked their way into the top 10 TF2 teams, before folding this September. Wltrs and pizza had a reputation as one of the best Scout duos in Europe and were quickly picked up by a fledgling MGO called Power Gaming. Since then they’ve been fighting for the top, being rated as one of the top 3 European TF2 teams. i38 is part of the i-series LAN parties, the biggest in the UK and one of the biggest in Europe, and wltrs and pizza got expenses paid to attend. Pretty cool!

According to pizza the level of play at the tournament wasn’t very high, with only six teams in attendance. Fortunately for the players and spectators, two of those were top 3 teams. Power Gaming and Team YoYoTech duked it out a total of three times, before Power Gaming could climb the podium. First in the group stages, where Team YoYoTech came out on top. Then in the upper bracket final and grand final, both of which Power Gaming won. Very close matches and good fun from what I’ve heard.

Tournament coverage can be found on resupply.eu, for instance this article about the grand final. The coolclan website also has a bunch of pictures from i38, featuring wltrs, pizza and more.

Congrats dudes!

Status: Finished

Match: 9L vs. take over

Date: 22nd of November 2009, 20:00 CET

Maps: ns_veil, ns_metal

9L: Almaty (merc ns_veil marine), dux, Fana, koetje, morphz, pantsu, Sublime

take over: beefcake, Danny, franky, king_yo, s4druid, Scale, x-man

Result: 1 – 3

Downloads: HLTV demo

Recap

Not a good day in 9L land. With three commanders you would imagine we have it covered, but unfortunately that isn’t the case. Sherpa lost his connection to Steam and couldn’t reconnect, while our two other comms were nowhere to be seen. And if that wasn’t enough, the plugin malfunctioned and refused to let Sublime join on our ns_veil marine round. We tried our best to cope under the circumstances and I think we did fairly well, but it wasn’t enough.

I’m actually pretty happy with our alien rounds, even if the score doesn’t reflect it. We lost both rounds, but it was mostly due to specific mistakes. Our scouting was abysmal, letting them get PGs up all over the map without any opposition and my Fading was worse than ever. There’s a good chance you’ll be seeing me do something else in our next matches. With some more practice I’m confident we can work out these issues and more however. Taking on Saunamen in the semi final is going to be a monumental task, but we’re going to give it our best shot.

As for a quick and dirty recap, here goes: We started out as alien on ns_veil, with a spunky new strat. We controlled the game fairly well early game, but let them get a PG up in C12 unopposed. They quickly reacted to the Hive being dropped and with me completely failing as Fade, it was game over. Second round marine we decided to shotgun rush, as we didn’t have a comm. Unfortunately the plugin malfunctioned and refused to let Sublime join the team, so we had to do it with five players. We made a good effort, but failed to kill the hive. After a quick map change, take over agreed to replay the last round. After a lengthy debate between the teams, we got Almaty from UGO to merc as commander. We tried to play it properly, but as is often the case when you play with a comm you’ve never played with before, things got very confusing. We pretty much got rolled and the score was 2-0 to take over.

Change of scenery to ns_metal, with 9L starting as aliens again. This was pretty much a repeat of the ns_veil round. Solid control early game, followed by horrible Fading and confusion mid to late game. On marines we once again opted to go for the cheesy shotgun rush, after some group therapy on vent (read: rage). Take over quickly realized what we were doing and dropped SCs. Hilarity ensued, but in the end we managed to come out on top through mixed skill, luck and OP mines. Round very much worth watching.

Thanks to take over for replaying the round where the plugin malfunctioned and to Almaty for stepping in as merc one round.

Preface

This week’s top match and Group B’s deciding match, as old school meets new school. We’ll be facing take over, the recently formed clan that stole franky from us earlier this season. We’ve been slowly but steadily improving lately, while they’ve been simmering on a reliably high level since day one. There’s no denying that they’re the favourites going into this match, but we’re going to do our best to put those predictions to shame.

Not only is this going to be a very exciting match to play and watch, it’s also of great importance to both teams. The winner of this match is likely going to win the group, and thereby getting the number one seed for the semi finals. A likely prediction would be that the winner of this match faces UGO, while the loser faces Saunamen. While both Saunamen and UGO are formidable opponents, UGO seems like the easier route to the final. I’m sure both teams are well aware of this, and the combination of prestige and rewards should make it a very tense match indeed.

Status: Finished

Match: 9L vs. Tuxedo Men

Date: 15th of November 2009, 20:00 CET

Maps: ns_origin, ns_veil

9L: dux, Fana, morphz, Oetel, pantsu, sherpa, Sublime

Keen Edge: Dw, Hanzo, jiriki, Maxx, psyc0mus, scary_jeff, Sonder

Result: 4 – 0

Downloads: HLTV demo

Recap

Another rough performance that still left us with all the points. The forfeit timer actually almost ran out the first round, as three of our players were having connection problems. From there on and out it was a rollercoaster of good and bad. We got some good teamwork going at times, but constant small mistakes kept holding us back. Still, it was a fun and at times challenging match to play, and that’s really all you can ask for.

The last round of the HLTV demo got cut off, but you’re only missing a couple of minutes of spawncamping after I run into the hive. Not entirely sure what happened, but I’m guessing the HLTV disconnected from the server before it was able to catch up to the HLTV delay.

Status: Finished

Match: 9L vs. Keen Edge

Date: 5th of November 2009, 22:30 CET

Maps: ns_eclipse, ns_origin

9L: dux, Fana, JustMe, morphz, Sublime, wltrs

Keen Edge: Arj, Chb, Cursed, huhuh, marmotte, Meyfarth, Terra

Result: 4 – 0

Downloads: HLTV demo

Recap

This was a bit of a strange one, as it was played entirely on a whim. We’d been struggling with arranging a date and time for the match, as kE was unable to field a team on the default time, and we didn’t have any commanders available on thursday, friday or saturday. On thursday however, it just so happened that we had JustMe — of late BM fame — practicing with us. I noticed that kE were also playing, and decided to give it a go. JustMe isn’t formally on our team, but kE allowed him to play (fair play gents). A bit of a risky move since we’d never played with him before, but that didn’t turn out to be a problem at all.

Rusty we may be, we were still the overwhelming favourites. This turned out to be an accurate description, as the match was pretty one-sided. It wasn’t very exciting, so I’ll spare you the details. JustMe did great as comm, especially considering neither him nor us knew what to expect from each other and wltrs brought the ownzor. Our Alien teamplay was also pretty decent — definitely improved in the last few weeks. Sublime’s Lerk was especially deadly. In the end I think wltrs deserves MOTM for his Marine on origin, but Sublime was only a hair behind. My Fading was terrible, but at least I didn’t die this time. Improvement!

Nec0, from the Korean team Demonic Soul, made a short highlights clip from the match. Great idea, so creds to him for that. There were some problems with the HLTV demos on ENSL, but that should be fixed now. The file on ninelegends.com contains both maps and all rounds in any case. I’d also like to thank x-man for reffing on very short notice, even when he didn’t have a proper computer available.

It’s no secret that we’ve been at it again lately, playing some games and getting revved up for NS2. We’ve even joined what is probably the last NS tournament ever, the thirteenth season of the European Natural Selection League. We were there in the beginning, albeit under the knife guise, so it seems fitting that we return for the proper ending too. Fortunately, several other teams have also been feeling the NS addiction return and it looks like we have a lot of matches to look forward to.

Now some of you reading this may be thinking “wow, deja vu… didn’t this already happen?”. Which is of course partly true. About a year ago, during ENSL Season 10, we also made a short return to NS. We went through trials and tribulations, from the lowest lows of drama to the highest highs of championship matches. In the end, through an almost miraculous combination of blind luck, latent skill and dogged perseverence, we managed to claim the title. Against all odds we beat The Sproggalots — who had 4-0ed us earlier in the season — and added another golden e-trophy to our collection.

A lot of good times were had, but winning let the air out of the balloon and we once again sunk back down into the quagmire of inactivity.

But now, we’re back again! Our last adventure has apparently given people big expectations. Unfortunately — I feel it’s appropriate to start with the bad — we’re in no shape to fulfill those expectations. It’s been over a year since the last time most of us played, and even then we were far from our top form. Even worse, the only past 9L-er who’s still on form, franky, (AKA. Kira or iwb) decided to join our main opponents. I can’t blame him for that though. The lack of a good Fade is especially hurting us, as I haven’t been able to get anywhere near decent in the couple of weeks we’ve played so far.

Since we started playing, we’ve gone through a little bit of drama and a lot of heavy defeats during practice. As the season is starting this week already, it’s going to be very difficult for us to get our form back in time for the tough matches. As it is, we’re likely aiming for the semi finals, possibly even a bronze finish if we can get back on form in time. Who knows though, another miracle may be waiting for us just over the horizon.

Now for the good. We’ve been placed in the arguably weaker group of the two, Group A. Keeping up with Take Over — our main opponents in Group A — will be tough, but we’re definitely going to try. The real kicker is the players we’ve managed to scoop together. When we started talking about mounting another comeback, I had no idea we’d be able to get such a legendary roster. Packed to the brim with old school ownerers, ready to mangle the opposition. Any experienced competitive player will certainly stop to think for a second when they see b1, Fana, dux, morphz, mu, Oetel, pantsus, sherpa, Sublime and wltrs join the server!

Will it last? That’s anybody’s guess. All I know is that we’re going to give it our best shot and have some fun together. Our first match is against another recently returned old team, Keen Edge. It’s probably being played this Sunday at 20:00 CET. I’ll post an update when I know for sure. An HLTV should be available for anyone wanting to watch us try to stumble our way back into the limelight.

This team review and interview was made for the first 9L website, back in 2006. At that time, Flatline was still a fairly unknown team, although they were quickly gaining recognition as they worked their way to the upper echelon of European NS. Since then they’ve been one of the most stable and successful NS teams of all time and have built up an impressive record of tournament achievements. In season 9, they finally won their first ENSL title and joined an exclusive group of champions.

Check it out!

Reading the NS.com forums lately, I’ve noticed several great posts. Thinking about this for a while, I thought it might be a good idea to collect the most interesting ones in a news post, as I know many of you aren’t very… fond of reading said forums. So, here goes:

Our very own plant in the NS2 dev team, dux, clarifies their current stance on bunnyhopping

You can still bunny as a skulk.

Cory, also a developer, lists the current weapons included in NS2

As it stands now, the marine’s weapon arsenal consists of the melee weapon, pistol, assault rifle, grenade launcher attachment for the assault rifle, shotgun, flamethrower, and minigun.

Personally, I’m not sure about the flamethrower and minigun — the dual wielding “HA” in particular — but it will be interesting to see how they’re implemented.

Yet another dev, Max, clarifies why he prefers a prediction based net code

I’m not sure why people think Quake 3 offers accuracy, in my mind it’s really the opposite. If you shoot where a player is on your screen and you have lag, you will miss them (you have to lead your target based on your ping). In Half-Life, if you shoot where the player is on your screen and you have lag you will hit them, no leading necessary. The drawback is that sometimes, especially if you’re really lagged, the player your hitting might feel like the shot was unfair (“Hey! I was around the corner!”). I’m not sure how the networking works in Source and haven’t really played any Source games multi-player, so it might be different there.

 

Our netcode is written from scratch. I originally integrated RakNet and OpenTNL (the Tribes networking library), but I had problems with them and didn’t like the idea of using those black boxes for something as critical as the networking. My implementation borrows ideas from Quake 3 and Half Life, though for the things you guys are discussing it’s more like HL than Q3A.

In my opinion, I find it difficult to argue with this. The no-prediction net code some players are pushing for would make high-ping matches (EU vs. USA for one) unplayable, not to mention putting even more focus on latency. There’s already more than enough of that if you ask me.

Past CAL-NS admin homicide delivers a great argument for the kind of gameplay we want in NS2

What he missed was the difference between micro level combat and macro level strategy.

 

Micro level combat (jumping, aiming, dodging, blocking, flying, blinking, leaping, bhopping, knockback, etc) is easily separated from macro level strategy (situational awareness, map control, res control, flanking, ambushing, team coordination, etc). NS1’s greatest achievement was merging great micro combat with great macro strategy. This is THE signature of Natural Selection and it needs to remain the THE signature of Natural Selection 2.

 

Most combat in NS1 is based around fast marines shooting and dodging faster aliens. The exception is the Onos, who just barrels straight for marines; it’s bad gameplay. Granted…the Onos adds strategy to the game, but it destroys the micro level combat. The only reason the Onos gets away with this is because it plays a support role and the cost keeps their numbers limited. If the exo-skeleton also plays a support role that is limited to only a few players, it might be acceptable to sacrifice their micro gameplay in order to increase the game’s overall strategic depth. The LAST thing we want are exo-trains that kill the combat system even more than HA in NS1.

If anything, our (the competitive community) main goal for influencing the developers should be hammering this point through to them. They may very well already be aware of it though — or at least I hope they are.

And last, but not least, this week in comedy.

Suggestions for future updates would be great, just drop some comments or give me a shout on IRC!

This short article was written in late October 2006. It sums up our trials and tribulations in the group stage of the fifth ENSL season. Much fun was had and many fond memories gained.

The end of the story did not live up to the events detailed here unfortunately. We beat Levitacus 4-0 in a dull final and the promised cash prize went up in smoke as Google reclaimed their money. Oh well!

Check it out!

A couple of months ago I started checking if there was any interest in putting together a less-than-serious team to play some NS2 alpha and beta matches with. I was very pleasantly surprised by the resulting feedback, as several past 9L players came out of nowhere to tell me they’d bought NS2 SE.

While I hope more oldtimers pop up at a later time, I definitely have enough players “signed up” to guarantee that we will be playing in the alpha and beta as a team. Hopefully we’ll be able to get some opponents and games going — I’m sure we’re not the only ones gearing up for NS2 like this.

A few months ago there was a twitter update on ns.com:

“Having a teamspeak session to hear the thoughts about NS2 from some very experienced NS players.”

Unsurprisingly this raised a few eyebrows, and a (dumb) debate ensued in the twitter thread on the ns.com forums. The names of the participants was also revealed. Now frankly, the chat wasn’t a big deal. We talked about a few topics of interest to competitive players, and got some previously unknown information about the game in the process. Basically, Flayra told us a little bit about what he had planned, and we gave him our thoughts and concerns. Interesting, but not especially exciting. There’s certainly no reason for anyone to feel left out.

We obviously didn’t sign any NDAs or anything like that, but I don’t feel comfortable sharing the contents of the chat regardless. Mostly because it was very insubstantial and could give people unrealistic expectations. I will say though, that it left me reassured and confident that the devs are doing their very best to make it a great game for both casual and competitive play.

So now we wait… Alpha release on the 31st of october would be way cool, but unrealistic.

There were some residual problems — such as the files section not working — due to a server upgrade, but they should all be fixed now. Please leave a comment if you experience any further problems.

This interview was made for the first 9L website, back in 2006. It was originally intended to be part of a larger series of interviews, but it ended up being the only interview. Some interesting answers from one of the most legendary European NS players.

Check it out!

Rags to riches is the story of sherpa’s journey from newbie to veteran gamer. It’s filled with great stories, both funny and nostalgic, about one of the most likeable players in the NS community.

It was first published in 2006, but consequently forgotten when the second Nine Legends website was launched in 2007. Two years later, it’s finally available again. Highly recommended reading for anyone who has the time to spare.

Check it out!

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?