This is something that's not been a part of Quake before, but we believe that this will make for a much better experience on a non-LAN environment, especially while rocket jumping or using projectile abilities. On the subject of rockets, which have been a sore spot for both us and our players, a couple of patches back we made two major changes: we fixed an issue that was causing extra latency when firing rockets, and we also started predicting rockets and local knockback on the client. (moving, strafing, crouching, jumping, etc.) This also makes supporting rollback much simpler, and should result in a more reliable experience on higher pings. Our solution is to transition to using a static mesh for each character state. For the pace of our game, we felt the additional server CPU usage, and the technical complexity of having to sync up the state of the animation bones and blend tree over the network was not worth having the ability to match up hits to the specific animation. One area where we should be seeing more changes is literally how the server is detecting hits (so the term 'hit detection' is actually appropriate here!) We currently use an animation-based system where we simulate player animations on the server, and rig up a lower-polygon, fatter version of the champion, independent from armor selection.

This is a change that can occur in pieces, and we're still not completely there yet. We made the decision to start moving systems over to server authority and client prediction, which is similar to previous Quake titles. This is a perfectly valid tech design decision, and plenty of high profile multiplayer games have released this way, but we felt uncomfortable with the trade-offs for a game like Quake.

We started off the Closed Beta period with two major systems being handled on the client: movement authority, and shooting authority. I'd like to take this opportunity to talk about where we're at, and where we're going, so here's a (not so!) brief summary of what's going on! The terms 'netcode' and 'hitreg' are terms that cover a wide swathe of observable issues, some that don't even involve the network at all.

When are you going to fix the netcode and hitreg for good? Do you intend to fix rocket launcher no-hit issues (direct and splash damage), or do you think it works fine as it is? What about rocket despawn? When will you fix the stuttering a lot of people experience?

Sharpkeys codeplex uninstall program