NeoGAF

That video.
The fuck?

The moon's eye plan.

I've spoken to every single person I've fought online do far, or heard their home background noise.

So either this isn't common or MS has some next level AI going on in the cloud.

No wonder I win all the time!

Not really :(

Wonder how many people have gotten pissed off at rage quitters when the game really gave the win to the other person and cut the other person off.

Originally Posted by Satchel

I've spoken to every single person I've fought online do far, or heard their home background noise.

So either this isn't common or MS has some next level AI going on in the cloud.

yup I usually hear people talking when I've played them

Originally Posted by Satchel

I've spoken to every single person I've fought online do far, or heard their home background noise.

So either this isn't common or MS has some next level AI going on in the cloud.

I knew the xBOTS were real!

Originally Posted by Satchel

I've spoken to every single person I've fought online do far, or heard their home background noise.

So either this isn't common or MS has some next level AI going on in the cloud.

could it be that you're still connected to them via voice, but its not them you're playing against.?

Originally Posted by Solstice

could it be that you're still connected to them via voice, but its not them you're playing against.?

That makes no sense. Or am I missing something?

Originally Posted by ZeroX03

But guys, the netcode in Killer Instinct is so good.

I remember seeing that, hilarious.

Double helix effed up, they got some explainin to do.

lol at the AI stuff some people in here were talking.

If you've used the GGPO client with any real frequency before, you've probably experienced this a couple of times in the past where the game flat out desyncs and both people on each end are fighting some weird otherworldly version of their opponent that's just straight up not matching up with the actual inputs their opponent is doing. The end result would be two people who both thought they won their match. Except I've never had it resync back up in GGPO. Whenever it would happen, we would just have to kill the window and restart the match.

I've never seen it happen in any retail releases that supported rollback or GGPO, but given that it's happening in KI, I guess it might be possible.

Holy hell.....I am definitely looking forward to an official statement on this.....this is crazy if true.

Originally Posted by Satchel

That makes no sense. Or am I missing something?

It makes sense. Voice and gameplay networking are probably handled by two completely separate systems. You are still connected through voice (most likely through MS built-in API) but the game goes out of sync. As a result, you still hear people but you might not see the same things gameplay-wise.

This is probably an extreme example. It is more likely that it won't be as noticeable in most cases, hence why you don't have a huge number of players reporting weird match results. Surely two players in chat would notice if they don't get the same match outcome?

Killer Instinct developers have been influenced by Demon Souls, but in KI you can invade (and escape) a realm multiple times during a bout.

Originally Posted by Mystery

I'm sure all of the competitive and professional fighting game players will have a huge problem with this, but a lot of people who invested into the console and game probably won't want to hear about it and will either say it's not much of a big deal, or deny it happens often enough to be a problem. The point is, the fact that it even happens at all is a problem in and of itself.

Is there really a competitive and professional following for the Killer Instinct series?

I've never considered the series a serious fighting milestone. It just had good graphics on the SNES and some interesting characters, but the fighting always felt weak to me.

Originally Posted by demigod

I remember seeing that, hilarious.

Double helix effed up, they got some explainin to do.

Gotta love how this single video wich is the only time the problem was reported totally nullifies all the other good things people said about the netcode, but happy you

Seems pretty easy to clear up. Why don't two people play online VS and record the footage using the DVR feature.

Both upload the footage to Skydrive and we'll see if this is something that can be replicated or if it was a one time issue...

Originally Posted by ILoveBish

Why is this bad? Everybody wins on their end, seems like a good thing?

You're kidding right? The whole point of playing against other people online, is not to pretend to play against other people online.

What the fuck... this is baaaaad.

I've had this happen at least once in GGPO, its not that surprising that its possible for this to happen. Hopefully its not that common and its something they can fix. Noticing one desync isn't that big a deal tho.

This is going to be heresy on both sides until someone confirms this.

I know one of you has KI! Get it done Parker!

It's just Desync from rollback netcode. It happens once in a blue moon if the connection is bad between the players. It has happened in 3rd Strike, DS and it will happen again in future titles using rollback netcode. It's not some massive controversy. The video is just an extreme example of it happening.

Wow, I think I had that exact thing happen to me. My game would freeze up while my buddy would be celebrating his win over voice chat, it happened maybe twice in our hour or so of matches.

if i play any fighter online and record the match, and the person i'm playing also records the match, we would expect the footage to be near identical.

so wtf happened here?

I love gaf but holy hell do people overreact on these forums. I've played a ton of KI and never had this issue and as others have mentioned I can hear the other guys through the Kinect. Let's all go crazy over what appears to be a potential compromise we make for online gaming and in return we have one of the smoothest online experiences but let's forget that and harp on the 1 percent -assuming this video is even legit.

And a reminder to others if you want to feel like you're an online champion, go to a local tournament fighting event and play there bc online will never and should never replace that. People take online way to seriously.

That's some pretty damning evidence. Did the top player receive a loss or lose connection at the end?

You're not directly fighting people; you're against their "fightars".

Originally Posted by Revolutionary

That's some pretty damning evidence. Did the top player receive a loss or lose connection at the end?

One match with syncing problems isn't damning at all. The question is how common are these problems?

Something something Skynet something power of the cloud.

We need to know how common this is. But damn, everyone wants this game to fail huh? Always assume the worst I suppose even though this is the first we've heard of something like this.

Originally Posted by LTWheels

It's just Desync from rollback netcode. It happens once in a blue moon if the connection is bad between the players. It has happened in 3rd Strike, DS and it will happen again in future titles using rollback netcode. It's not some massive controversy. The video is just an extreme example of it happening.

This.

Have you people played Virtua Fighter 5 FS? Surely you remember that game's stupid rollback mystery.

It's a small bug, that happens rarely.

Originally Posted by elektrixx

You're not directly fighting people; you're against their "fightars".

OMG 11/10. Haha damn this thread has delivered and then some. You should copyright that before they do. While you're at it, copyright "shootars". Imagine the next movie tie-in game to James Cameron's Avatar 2, it has advanced cloud powered AI; they call them "Avataratars".

It seems like a majority of you are turning on the game simply due to this de-syncing issue.


Really? How about playing the game on its own merits before condemning it because of an issue that at the end of the day, seems like a small issue. It would be one thing if this issue broke the game, but it doesn't, and don't act like it does. No fighting game's online play is perfect. None. This is just another example of that.

It looks to me like there's no actual agreed upon game state, each player's Xbone runs their own instance of the match and just sends the inputs to the other guy's instance of the match. That's actually pretty ingenious, but it only works if you can guarantee <5ms of latency (for a fighter). I think this only really happens if you get a hard desync though (no communication whatsoever), instability would probably use GGPO (I'm not sure if Killer Instinct uses GGPO, but I would design it that way).

For example, if the latency was 50ms to the other guy, I could input a PPK combo which would happen immediately on my instance of the match BUT it would happen 50ms later on the other guy's instance of the match as a result of traveling through the internet, and it just so happens that within that 50ms delay that the other guy started blocking. This means on my instance of the game I'm doing a combo on my opponent because I opened him up with my PPK, but on the other guy's instance of the game he blocked my PPK and is now punishing me in his game, and the individual game states will start diverging wildly from then on. This isn't really much of a problem for low-skill games as the speed of inputs and reactions is slow enough that it's very likely both instances will come to the same conclusion of the game state, but for pros where 10 commands are being inputted per second the chances of one slipping into the latency gap is likely.

tldr the two consoles don't have an agreed upon game state, they just assume they are by replicating the inputs each player sends into the instance of the match of the other player, delays and all.

Originally Posted by demidar

It looks to me like there's no actual agreed upon game state, each player's Xbone runs their own instance of the match and just sends the inputs to the other guy's instance of the match. That's actually pretty ingenious, but it only works if you can guarantee <5ms of latency (for a fighter). I think this only really happens if you get a hard desync though (no communication whatsoever), instability would probably use GGPO (I'm not sure if Killer Instinct uses GGPO, but I would design it that way).

For example, if the latency was 50ms to the other guy, I could input a PPK combo which would happen immediately on my instance of the match BUT it would happen 50ms later on the other guy's instance of the match as a result of traveling through the internet, and it just so happens that within that 50ms delay that the other guy started blocking. This means on my instance of the game I'm doing a combo on my opponent because I opened him up with my PPK, but on the other guy's instance of the game he blocked my PPK and is now punishing me in his game, and the individual game states will start diverging wildly from then on. This isn't really much of a problem for low-skill games as the speed of inputs and reactions is slow enough that it's very likely both instances will come to the same conclusion of the game state, but for pros where 10 commands are being inputted per second the chances of one slipping into the latency gap is likely.

tldr the two consoles don't have an agreed upon game state, they just assume they are by replicating the inputs each player sends into the instance of the match of the other player, delays and all.

You got all that from this one instance?

H o l y crap! Omg, mind blown. What if all the times I lost in UMVC3 was because of sync issues!! I'll never look at fighting games online the same again (kidding). KI seem to have a huge issue ,wow.

Let's not forget the possibility this was flat out faked too.

It'd probably be easy to spot when a desync occurs. If you're not too busy mashing out combos and notice your opponent is doing bone-headed things like randomly attacking the air for no reason, it's probably a desync.

Originally Posted by Satchel

Let's not forget the possibility this was flat out faked too.

This is what I'm hoping for so badly right now.

Originally Posted by Satchel

Let's not forget the possibility this was flat out faked too.

No. Why would anyone want to fake this. It's just a de-sync.


The closest thing this could be fake to is the replay mode issues littering KI, but even then it'll take a lot of internet magic to fake this on this guy's behalf to make DSP--a professional fighting game player--look like a sore loser. And if it is fake; who /cares/?

LOL! Really?!

That's some messed up shit.

If true ( and i think it is ) and common ( something that KI players much check out from now on ) then this is just unnacceptable.

Originally Posted by demidar

It looks to me like there's no actual agreed upon game state, each player's Xbone runs their own instance of the match and just sends the inputs to the other guy's instance of the match. That's actually pretty ingenious, but it only works if you can guarantee <5ms of latency (for a fighter).

Yes, that's approximately how netplay should work, apart from the comment about latency.

We've gone over this in the other thread, but the basic idea is in input delay systems you augment the available latency by running the game late (so you can add the delay to the maximum expected latency) and in rollback systems you augment the input latency by executing the game even if you don't get input and retroactively apply it "in the past" by rewinding and fast-forwarding the game internally (so you can add the rollback window to the maximum expected latency). GGPO combine both delay and rollbacks to get the widest lag window possible (delay+rollback window).

In the ideal model it's not that the game state is not agreed upon, it's that the mechanics guarantee if it was agreed upon once it will not have diverged whenever you've got all the inputs. If you're missing some, it will diverge temporarily and come back to an agreement when you receive the missing inputs.

However, the principle is only sound for a small window (20 frames in GPGO's case, much much less in rollcaster's case) *and* to account for bugs the system should regularly check both sides agree for the span of the fight for which they've received all the inputs. There should also be regular adjustments for wall clock skew.

And when I say "regular" I mean at least every second, not huge desynced sequences like what's happening here. No idea what they are thinking for by letting it drift so much.

Just...wow

How did this manage to get through QA?