DescentBB

I there any way to enable or increase the client-side prediction for D3's online play? Right now I think I'm seeing only what the server's data packets are telling me, because I see other players' ships blinking around not looking smooth at all, and it's pretty tough to track their motion so's I can blast them with my MD..

Also, is there a way to access some sort of command console in D3, like there is in Quake and all of its descendants?

-Joker

Unfortunately being nearly 10 years old, Descent 3 does not support any of those features. The only command line I've heard of that applies to multiplayer smoothing is the -usesmoothing command line, and I have never been able to notice a difference between having it or not.

Uses moothing? What's moothing?

J/k. Thanks for the hint, I'll try that out, at least.

-Joker

Careful, the -usesmoothing command can sometimes incorrectly interpolate a player's motion in between packets, especially if they're changing direction frequently. I usually fly with it off, human prediction seems to work better than the smoothing algorithms.

Note: There are a couple of things that tend to help, from a server perspective. Some servers are now enforcing a minimum packetrate, to help ensure players aren't playing on old dial-up packet frequencies to make themselves \"skippier\". There has also been some effort in the AntiCheat code to implement smoothing on the server side, but the consensus seems to be that it makes things worse, so most servers don't use it.

The biggest thing is just to adapt to the latency. It's really amazing how much difference there is in how far you have to lead your shots between a game where your ping is 50ms and one at 200ms.