Official SSF2T: HD Remix General Discussion Thread

[SaBrE]

Well, I just got back from Evo and played about 30 games of the new beta. I’m not enthused.

I didn’t see any big rollbacks (yay), but the game feels completely jittery and a little laggy all the time, even over sub 100ms connections. The characters movement is not smooth at all – theiy jiggle around like the TV is vibrating or something, even when they’re just jumping around or not doing a move. It feels like they’ve added input delay or something else to screw with move timing. I had a hard time reversing or softening tick throws and missed lots of fairly easy stuff like sweeping Ken after a whiffed jab DP.

It seems to me like they’ve made some trade offs that improve the game in the worst case, but actually make it worse in the average case.

exactly, plus the fact we cant join games most of the time, is not helping either

[chun_li_s_thighs]

Looks like there’s a blog post about what’s going on with the new patch:

http://www.capcom-unity.com/jimmyrey/blog/2008/08/12/sfhd_beta_patch_issues

Hey guys. I’ve been looking around our board and other boards for reaction on the patch. Some of it is good and some of it it not so good. For those whose experience has seemed to degraded, I wanted to let you guys know what’s going on and hopefully it will alleviate some of your fears.

Many of you guys have indicated that it now seems a bit more jittery and possibly laggy now that the patch is applied. There were 3 issues that we knew were still going to be in the game, but unfortunately, they were too “risky” to fix in time. By risky, we mean that the changes were deep enough in the code were it presented a risk to fix due to potential to create other bugs and require a ton more QA. As we wanted to get the patch out soon, we decided go keep the issues in the game for now, to be fixed for when the game was released. The issues are:

• The background will jitter around a bit. This is actually occuring more in the real world than in our testing, but we do know about it and have a fix. This is being caused by the camera position adjusting when the “smoothing” frames are being played back.

• When throwing an opponent, the character being thrown seems to be lagging behind. This is an issue we know about and will be fixed.

• Sometimes when throwing a hadoken, the fireball isn’t seen until many frames later.

These 3 issues are all related to the “smoothing” that was put into the game. The character frames are actually playing much better than before, but the background jittering is making is seem like there is lag when there isn’t. As this was a new feature, we wanted to make sure it could be turned off if need be.

To turn off smoothing, just hold LT, RT, RB, and LB. While holding them, press start and you should heara tone indicating it has turned off.

There are still other netcode improvements that have been implemented that should improve the gameplay, but for some, it seems the smoothing is making the game feel laggy when it isn’t.

Please give it a shot and let me know what you guys think, and keep up the good bug reporting!

[Sirlin]

I played the patched beta yesterday and I’m not sure what this “jittering” is referring to. Are people experiencing this jittering in the 4:3 mode as well as the widescreen mode? Explain exactly what it looks like. Is the comment related to the backgrounds jittering in widescreen mode only? I have only played in 4:3 mode since the patch went live.

Regarding the problem of not connecting to games, when you do a network diagnostic from the xbox dashboard, does it say that your NAT is “strict” or “moderate” or what? Would be nice to know if mostly people with “strict” are experiencing connection problems or everyone.

[inkblot]

Ug. I’m getting a very queasy feeling.

1. Regarding the jitter, Rey says

This is actually occuring more in the real world than in our testing, but we do know about it and have a fix.

This is the second time Capcom has admitted that there is a gap between their test environment and the real world (the first issue was not testing for packet loss). I’m not surprised by that at all. There is no substitute for testing over the real internet! I have no idea why Capcom isn’t internally testing over the real internet even now. Maybe it’s an XBox limitation. Either way, it’s troubling, especially considering…

2. Rey also says

There are still other netcode improvements that have been implemented that should improve the gameplay, but for some, it seems the smoothing is making the game feel laggy when it isn’t.

How are these new improvements being tested? Rey says they weren’t included in the beta update because they were too “risky” to add, so presumably they’re tested using their network simulator and not the real internet. Will these improvements backfire in the field just like smoothing did?

[The_Mullah]

I played the patched beta yesterday and I’m not sure what this “jittering” is referring to. Are people experiencing this jittering in the 4:3 mode as well as the widescreen mode? Explain exactly what it looks like. Is the comment related to the backgrounds jittering in widescreen mode only? I have only played in 4:3 mode since the patch went live.

Regarding the problem of not connecting to games, when you do a network diagnostic from the xbox dashboard, does it say that your NAT is “strict” or “moderate” or what? Would be nice to know if mostly people with “strict” are experiencing connection problems or everyone.

mine is open or whatever it is that’s best, and i couldn’t connect to people when i tried. My internet connection is also amazing.

[caliagent_3]

I played the patched beta yesterday and I’m not sure what this “jittering” is referring to. Are people experiencing this jittering in the 4:3 mode as well as the widescreen mode? Explain exactly what it looks like. Is the comment related to the backgrounds jittering in widescreen mode only? I have only played in 4:3 mode since the patch went live.

Regarding the problem of not connecting to games, when you do a network diagnostic from the xbox dashboard, does it say that your NAT is “strict” or “moderate” or what? Would be nice to know if mostly people with “strict” are experiencing connection problems or everyone.

My nat and everything is open. Just wondering, but are you able to join games that are open consistently?

Ug. I’m getting a very queasy feeling.

1. Regarding the jitter, Rey says

This is the second time Capcom has admitted that there is a gap between their test environment and the real world (the first issue was not testing for packet loss). I’m not surprised by that at all. There is no substitute for testing over the real internet! I have no idea why Capcom isn’t internally testing over the real internet even now. Maybe it’s an XBox limitation. Either way, it’s troubling, especially considering…

2. Rey also says How are these new improvements being tested? Rey says they weren’t included in the beta update because they were too “risky” to add, so presumably they’re tested using their network simulator and not the real internet. Will these improvements backfire in the field just like smoothing did?

This was my main issue. Their QA practices are RIDICULOUSLY FLAWED. And like i said before, it’s not only them, it’s pretty much industry wide.

[inkblot]

I played the patched beta yesterday and I’m not sure what this “jittering” is referring to. Are people experiencing this jittering in the 4:3 mode as well as the widescreen mode? Explain exactly what it looks like. Is the comment related to the backgrounds jittering in widescreen mode only? I have only played in 4:3 mode since the patch went live.

I’m playing in widescreen format, where the screen is zoomed in and the characters are big. Here is my description of the “jittering”

Consider Ryu’s forward jump. He moves in a parabola, and it’s very smooth. Every frame Ryu moves an equal amount along the parabola. Jittery Ryu still moves along a parabola, but he’s not moving the same distance every frame. It looks like he’s being shot in shaky-cam, if that helps.

In the blog Rey says it’s the background that’s jittering, but I don’t believe it. The background looks fine, it’s the characters. And this does seem to be linked to smoothing. I turned smoothing on and off a couple of times during the same match (so same networking conditions). With smoothing on I saw no rollbacks but lots of jitters. With smoothing off I saw several small rollbacks (tiny little ones, not giant warping) but no jitters between rollbacks.

[Sirlin]

inkblot: try the game in the 4:3 mode (where the characters are smaller) and see if the jittering does not happen anymore.

[osotogari]

I play in 4:3 and been seeing the jittering since the update on high and low ping games

[DemonLos]

Yes, I also have my NAT set to open(no router, direct connection) and I connect maybe 3/10 or so. Usually get session no longer available or some such crap.

As for the jittering/choppiness, I noticed this on the characters not the backgrounds. I play in widescreen so I will try 4:3 this evening to see if it makes a difference but I’m pretty sure it’s smoothing related as others have commented.

Edit: GG’s always osoto. That was always my favorite judo technique, btw…

[osotogari]

Edit: GG’s always osoto. That was always my favorite judo technique, btw…

ya always fun playing you DemonLos, it use to be my favorite technique for many years.

I get the connecting problem also, I’ll refresh 5 6 times and try to connect and I get the session no longer available error when I go back I can still see the session and every time I refresh host ping changes, so he has to be there I would think.
I’ll check NAT when I get home

[KING]

Wow the patch made the online play like shit. It’s almost as bad and very much resembles hyper fighting lag with dropped inputs, slow jerky animations etc. It’s like they decided to take a step back on purpose.

I felt like deleting this shit off my HD after playing 10 games of garbage.

…thanks for letting me know about the progress on the beta testing.

goes back to SCIV

[mad_possum]

I’m playing with my NAT open, in 4:3 mode, with the smoothing turned off. I have had some trouble connecting, it fails to join games about 50-60% of the time. I played a bunch of games in ranked (both joining and hosting) and went from one game to the next with little wait so it seemed either more people were playing ranked or it was easier to connect.

When the connections were good and the smoothing was turned off the game played great, just below GGPO quality. When the connectiones were bad it was an unplayable slide show. And it did seem that when the connection was lagging that it was dropping inputs.

But I do have to say that when I was in a room and the connections were good it played great and I was very impressed. It just seems that there is no middle ground, just two extremes: great and virtually unplayable.

[margalis]

When a company releases a software product that they think works well and are then surprised by a deluge of complaints about fairly obvious problems something is horribly wrong.

I wonder of the ST:HD devs realize they are killing their hype with the delays, shoddy releases and general impression that they are overmatched?

Edit: I kind of feel bad because maybe they are just understaffed. (In that case why take on a project if you can’t staff it correctly?) But step 1 is admitting you have a problem, and step 2 is swallowing your pride and fixing it. It’s probably too late to deal with the art pipeline issues but it isn’t too late to deal with the networking issues.

For fuck’s sake just bite the bullet and bring on Ponder for a while. This is getting embarrassing.

[Don_Barracuda]

What did ponder say last time he was here, I hope they are looking for the right thing…

[Pablo_the_Mex]

So that is what the updates were for? I have not played it yet, with evo and all. I will try to check it out some time today.

[fatboy]

I still think that we should base all our criticisms on the final version. They still have a long way to go. Let?s see where it lands up.

[System_1]

I still think that we should base all our criticisms on the final version. They still have a long way to go. Lets see where it lands up.

Yes, in regards to the net code AND the character changes.

[LeRaldo]

I still think that we should base all our criticisms on the final version. They still have a long way to go. Lets see where it lands up.

No, we shouldn’t. This is specifically what the beta is for. So they can get rid of all the problems. Everyone understands this isn’t the final product.

[_Onslaught]

Netcode is actually a little better. For one the game stopped crashing and freezing up my xbox and no huge warping.

This game is too fun.