- Staff
- #1
Hello,
As some of you may have noticed, we increased the server from a tick rate of 20 to a tickrate of 33 last night. This is important for many reasons, but the most important will be things such as improved hit registration. However, there are some side effects of this change, most noticeably how often firearms are allowed to shoot bullets.
The reasons for this are complicated, but it means that some guns will now fire at a slightly higher rate when using full auto, and some will fire at a slightly lower rate.
Here is a visualisation of how different guns have been impacted. The "True" position, is what happens if every gun fired at the exact moment that it was allowed to.
The "true" to achieve completely, without being able to use a tickrate that is much higher than the firerate of all of the weapons. If we had a tickrate nearing 1000, it would be closer, but there would still be a noticeable difference.
Warning - Everything below here will be complicated. Skip to the end if you don't care.
I'm going to try and summarise why things have changed, and outline how I think we might be able to improve things.
Firstly, some definitions:
There are some very long calculations to determine if a bullet is fired, but the algorithm essentially works like this. I've highlighted the two key areas that are key in bold.
An example of why this is a flaw is if a bullet is now allowed to be fired 0.00001 seconds after a frame has finished, it won't fire until the next frame cycles, which would be 0.03 seconds later on a 33 tick server, or 0.05 seconds later on a 20 tick server.
Changing to 33 ticks from 20 ticks means that the weapons that the gap has shifted. Some guns now fire more often on full auto, and some fire less often.
So, what do we do now?
There are basically 5 options:
I hope you enjoyed my post, and I'm happy to answer any question that you may have.
tl;dr
As some of you may have noticed, we increased the server from a tick rate of 20 to a tickrate of 33 last night. This is important for many reasons, but the most important will be things such as improved hit registration. However, there are some side effects of this change, most noticeably how often firearms are allowed to shoot bullets.
The reasons for this are complicated, but it means that some guns will now fire at a slightly higher rate when using full auto, and some will fire at a slightly lower rate.
Here is a visualisation of how different guns have been impacted. The "True" position, is what happens if every gun fired at the exact moment that it was allowed to.
Warning - Everything below here will be complicated. Skip to the end if you don't care.
I'm going to try and summarise why things have changed, and outline how I think we might be able to improve things.
Firstly, some definitions:
- Tickrate - The number of times a second the server runs all of the code to calculate what happens next.
- Tickrate Delay - The number of seconds between each frame occuring = 1/Tickrate
- The Tickrate Delay for a 33 tick server is 0.0303030303 seconds
- The Tickrate Delay for a 20 tick server is 0.05 seconds
- Frame - The single point in time where everything is calculated. The tickrate defines the number of server frames per second.
- Think - An internal name for the code that defines what happens on a frame
- RPM - Rounds Per Minute - How the weapon fire rates are calculated in PERP. A higher number means more bullets can be fired every second
- Firerate Delay - The number of seconds between each round being fired = 60/RPM
There are some very long calculations to determine if a bullet is fired, but the algorithm essentially works like this. I've highlighted the two key areas that are key in bold.
- A "Think" is called for a gun
- Check to see if you can fire? If any are not true then stop.
- Is the player holding left click? (or their +attack bind)
- Is GetNextPrimaryFire() less than the current time?
- Is the gun in the hands and ready to fire?
- Does the gun have enough bullets to shoot?
- Fire the weapon by
- Take a bullet from the available ammo
- Set the next time the gun can fire as the current time plus the the Firerate Delay
- Make a bang
- Shoot a bullet
An example of why this is a flaw is if a bullet is now allowed to be fired 0.00001 seconds after a frame has finished, it won't fire until the next frame cycles, which would be 0.03 seconds later on a 33 tick server, or 0.05 seconds later on a 20 tick server.
Changing to 33 ticks from 20 ticks means that the weapons that the gap has shifted. Some guns now fire more often on full auto, and some fire less often.
- If a weapon can be fired every 0.04 seconds (1200 RPM), it would have fired on every frame with 20 ticks, as 0.04<0.05. However, with 33 ticks it will have some frames in between where it does not fire as 0.4>0.303. This means that the gun may now only fire every 0.06 seconds instead of 0.05 seconds.
- If a weapon can be fired every 0.06 seconds (1000 RPM), it would have fired on every other with frame with 20 ticks as 0.06>0.05, meaning 0.1 second gaps. However, with 33 ticks, it still fires at every frame as 0.06<0.0606 (0.303*2=0.0606). This means the gun may now fire every 0.6 seconds instead of 0.1 seconds.
This image represents when an AK-47 should fire. The orange cells are approximately when the frames occur. The key area is in pink, showing the increased delay in the fire rate as the bullet should fire "just" after 4th frame is called on a 33 tick server. However, for a 22 tick server it was called earlier.
This image represents when an FAMAS should fire. The orange cells are approximately when the frames occur. The key area is in pink, showing the decreased delay in the fire rate as the bullet should fire just before the 3rd frame is called on a 33 tick server. However, for a 22 tick server it was called much later.
The FAMAS benefits the most from this, as the RPM is 1000, which is only just above 990, which is half of 33*60.
The FAMAS benefits the most from this, as the RPM is 1000, which is only just above 990, which is half of 33*60.
So, what do we do now?
There are basically 5 options:
- Change the server back to 20 ticks
- This will be bad for many things, but might be needed if the server can't handle 33 ticks anyway
- Change all of the guns to have an RPM that it is a factor of 1980, so they all fire consistently at 33 ticks
- This is not really a long term solution and would put the guns into bins
- Change all of the guns to have an RPM that has an "equivalent" value of the 20 tick firerate
- This does not achieve the goal of making the guns act as they were originally intended to act
- Change the firerate delay calculation so that it depends on when the gun should have fired, rather than when it did fire
- This might be very complicated, have unintended side effects, and I have no idea if it will work
- Just leave it as it is an accept the new world order
I hope you enjoyed my post, and I'm happy to answer any question that you may have.
tl;dr
- Changing the tick rate made some guns fire slower and some guns fire faster
- There are ways to change this, but they will require some development time and things may go wrong or not work at all
- Go buy a famas
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