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[K.Sabot]

The more I learn about the development on SFV, the more I'm surprised at how good of a game it actually ended up being, at least as far as gameplay goes. Everything Capcom has done with this game just screams "we're broke".

More like "We've got all this money from Monster Hunter and you want to make a fighting game? Hahahaha, sure here's a bag of hamburgers for your budget."

 

[PtM]

Just came in to post this. He said he worked on the SFV server stuff, namely capcom fighters network. He doesn't talk about P2P session netcode anywhere.

Yeah, this thread needs an emergency lockdown.

 

[Baleoce]

Just came in to post this. He said he worked on the SFV server stuff, namely capcom fighters network. He doesn't talk about P2P session netcode anywhere.

That's true. Also wasn't there a picture someone took from a recent event where a company was advertising the fact they did SFVs network code? I'm on mobile atm so can't do much, but I know the pic is floating around GAF somewhere.

 

[The Spoony Hou]

I wonder if we will ever get details on this, seriously. The amount of money especially but I can't imagine that Sony was ok with that launch. They made the game happen after all and this doesn't really sound like "money well spent". I don't say the game is bad but the project itself seems to be unbelievably bad executed.

From what it looks like to me, Sony was desperate to have the fighting community adopt their console. After SFIV was a success on 360, and not the PS3 because it was a shoddy version, Sony needed the next great game to be played on PS3. That's why SFxT and MK9 had both exclusive Sony content. Then they ported SFIV to the PS4 and financed SFV.

Again, this is all speculation, but it seems really obvious to me. Also seem kinda unnecessary, since the PS4 stomped the XBone pretty bad, but Sony's still going for it.

 

[Baleoce]

Edit - I misunderstood. I'll watch that ultrachen video when I get back home.

 

[icecold1983]

i believe it. the netcode is horrendous. its almost as bad as bf4 was at launch

 

[Numb]

 

[bone_and_sinew]

I usually would dismiss this kind of thing as hyperbolic nonsense but for Capcom, it was a Tuesday.

 

[Oneself]

So I guess it would have taken one more guy to get an arcade mode at launch.

 

[ImBarryScott]

I don't understand the hate for the net code I'm seeing. It's been pretty much flawless for me from both home with a 4mb connection and work with gigabit *shrug*. I'm a network programmer in the industry too, as well as an FGC scrub, so it's something I always keep an eye on.

 

[Heavy's Sandvich]

The guy that did this job - give him a lifetime achievement award.

 

[Testicular Sound Express]

I love how people who have no idea how to develop throw around the term 'net code' like they have any idea wtf they are talking about

 

[RSTEIN]

I think gears 2 had one guy too.

 

[Smooth Operator]

I don't understand the hate for the net code I'm seeing. It's been pretty much flawless for me from both home with a 4mb connection and work with gigabit *shrug*. I'm a network programmer in the industry too, as well as an FGC scrub, so it's something I always keep an eye on.

Same, never had a single issue with the netcode (And i play with a lot of IRL friends, no issues on both sides when we play online).

 

[BumblebeeCody]

And all he paid in was Fight Money...and it still wasn't even enough fight money to buy a colour.

 

[catashtrophe]

And all he paid in was Fight Money...and it still wasn't even enough fight money to buy a colour.

This legit made me laugh

 

[lordfuzzybutt]

The feeling when he finally got to put that sentence on his LinkedIn profile must be amazing.

 

[Marvel]

i believe it. the netcode is horrendous. its almost as bad as bf4 was at launch

It's not that bad... christ.

 

[Baleoce]

To the people saying that their online experience is seamless and their matches are always smooth, presumably that means you've never experienced the game when rollback is being implemented aggressively. Because it does happen, and it's not pretty. One tip I can give though, is always set matchmaking to ask you to confirm a match first. Even if you filter 5 bar only in 'battle settings' it can still auto connect you to a 1 bar opponent.

 

[Pompadour]

I don't understand the hate for the net code I'm seeing. It's been pretty much flawless for me from both home with a 4mb connection and work with gigabit *shrug*. I'm a network programmer in the industry too, as well as an FGC scrub, so it's something I always keep an eye on.

I think a lot of people, especially in this thread, are lumping all the online stuff into "netcode."

The netcode for SFV is one of the best for a fighting game but still isn't the best. I'd say Killer Instinct, Skullgirls PC, and Tekken Tag 2 ran better in general. This netcode is easily the best for any Capcom fighter that wasn't a port using GGPO (and even then I'd still give it Capcom because it's not like GGPO is perfect).

However, the matchmaking hasn't been good for a lot of people. Fortunately, it's been pretty good for me but I read that people in Europe have a tough time finding matches. People also end up fighting people 1000 points higher or lower than their own rank but I don't think that can be helped if the playerbase isn't massive (which it isn't).

The matchmaking and server stuff that this kind presumably did himself isn't great but the only netcode for matches is very good.

To the people saying that their online experience is seamless and their matches are always smooth, presumably that means you've never experienced the game when rollback is being implemented aggressively. Because it does happen, and it's not pretty. One tip I can give though, is always set matchmaking to ask you to confirm a match first. Even if you filter 5 bar only in 'battle settings' it can still auto connect you to a 1 bar opponent.

1 bar matches in SF4 were also abysmal, they were just a different kind of abysmal. Maybe rollback netcode looks worse when you're matched up with someone bad because your opponent is teleporting across the screen but I don't see how that's functionally worse than playing in a match that's in super slow motion, watching your inputs reach your character a good 3-5 seconds after you pressed a button.

 

[ImBarryScott]

I think a lot of people, especially in this thread, are lumping all the online stuff into "netcode."

The netcode for SFV is one of the best for a fighting game but still isn't the best. I'd say Killer Instinct, Skullgirls PC, and Tekken Tag 2 ran better in general. This netcode is easily the best for any Capcom fighter that wasn't a port using GGPO (and even then I'd still give it Capcom because it's not like GGPO is perfect).

However, the matchmaking hasn't been good for a lot of people. Fortunately, it's been pretty good for me but I read that people in Europe have a tough time finding matches. People also end up fighting people 1000 points higher or lower than their own rank but I don't think that can be helped if the playerbase isn't massive (which it isn't).

The matchmaking and server stuff that this kind presumably did himself isn't great but the only netcode for matches is very good.

Yes, I agree with that. The game net code itself is what I was referring to. The matchmaking isn't great. Actually, at home I don't have any trouble but at work I do. But then we're behind a lot of security at work too

GGPO is great but in all honest I haven't found SFV's net code to be much worse (if at all). Maybe it's because I have requests set to ask and only play people with 4-5 bars. I don't even give poor connections a chance. But I wouldn't do that in any GGPO game either.

 

[Opus Angelorum]

Well at least it had 100% more personnel than those that worked on the offline content.

 

[Hyun Sai]

As much as I want to praise the guy, yeah no.

Even at empty hours I found matches in less than a minute in SFIV and TTT2 matchmating. In SFV I can spend nearly one fucking hour with no match at all in the evening.

Capcom went full indie on this one.

 

[Valkyr1983]

Credit to that 1 employee for sure

Launch week was a disaster and I forever gave up on the game at that point. First impressions and all

However I'll give it another visit when arcade and vs CPU options are added

Stark contrast to how many hours I spent on Sf4 man, that was like 2 years of my life

 

[Baleoce]

1 bar matches in SF4 were also abysmal, they were just a different kind of abysmal. Maybe rollback netcode looks worse when you're matched up with someone bad because your opponent is teleporting across the screen but I don't see how that's functionally worse than playing in a match that's in super slow motion, watching your inputs reach your character a good 3-5 seconds after you pressed a button.

Well in SF4 the visible lag was present on both clients. That's not always the case with rollback in SFV, and it's usually the culprit who gets the smoother experience. I'm not implying the netcode in 4 is generally better btw, I'm just talking about how the lag presents itself and affects the game.

 

[Asd202]

The game must have had a massive budget lol.

 

[Jacksinthe]

That seems absolutely impossible.

It isn't.

My first run in with netcode I had P2P running co-op in under a few hours. Had some bugs, but the base was built.

With all the time he had - it's doable. Complicated, but doable. Impressive, really.

 

[vg260]

The title/OP could use some clarification. Netcode and CFN are not necessarily the same thing. People keep lumping everything under "netcode" but that just the in-match code, not necessarily the CFN server functionality built around it outside of the match, which includes matchmaking/lobby/stats and server stuff.

sorry, beaten above.

Still, pretty crazy.

 

[icecold1983]

It's not that bad... christ.

the fact that i can just load up bit torrent to make the game completely unplayable for my opponent whilst being completely fine for me says otherwise

 

[Meciu]

That's a nice thing to have in a resume. Kudos to the guy.

 

[ImBarryScott]

the fact that i can just load up bit torrent to make the game completely unplayable for my opponent whilst being completely fine for me says otherwise

How do you propose the net coder solve that? That's completely out of his hands, unfortunately. You can only optimise bandwidth so far.

 

[Chao]

Is Capcom in trouble or something?

Can't believe their almost non-existent output so far this gen - re releases and ports doesn't count - , didn't they earn a lot of money last gen?

I bought pretty much every big capcom game last gen because they were so good, why can't they get their shit together all of a sudden?

Is it because the Pantha Rei thing that didn't work out or what?

So many questions!

 

[icecold1983]

How do you propose the net coder solve that? That's completely out of his hands, unfortunately. You can only optimise bandwidth so far.

probably like every other game ive ever played where both parties will lag

 

[Raitaro]

What's this supposed to mean...? If a game doesn't sell it won't be supported, regardless of business model (and that's not the case of SFV). Games has service has nothing to do with SFV's problems.

It does imo, in some ways at least. A gradually updated service based game like SFV won't as easily be able to recoup bigger (paid) updates that for past iterations came on seperate discs if sales are (in some ways) disappointing and the potential customer base for such updates remains low. This means that bigger overhauls to the netcode or UI, which are needed more because of the lower budget perhaps due to the chosen business model, probably won't come soon, as these are normally also saved for such bigger 40 dollar updates or GOTY editions etc. (like with MKXL and its new netcode recently).

Sure, if SFV sold boat loads the incentive would be bigger to implement such updates in any way they could to keep a positive word of mouth going, but in this case, with sales possibly being more on the disappointing side, we might be ending up with a game as service / platform that might never get to a level of polish and funtionality that older games got to that did receive such updates.

SFV began as quite barebones but with a promise to keep improving in other words, but that now comes with a risk of it remaining quite barebones in terms of bigger updates due to a lower, long term focused budget that might end up being cut short because of (in some ways) disappointing sales that in turn might diminish Capcom's incentive to keep investing in it. That's why sales might matter more to these games as platforms if you consider where they'll end up and what they begin with, hence why that possibly one man netcode job might be all that we'll have in the long run.

 

[Morinaga]

I usually would dismiss this kind of thing as hyperbolic nonsense but for Capcom, it was a Tuesday.

Bravo.

 

[sixteen-bit]

dat shoestring budget

 

[vg260]

How do you propose the net coder solve that? That's completely out of his hands, unfortunately. You can only optimise bandwidth so far.

The issue is that only one player sees the lag, not both seeing the same thing which doesn't happen with other games, from my understanding.

 

[Baleoce]

The issue is that only one player sees the lag, not both seeing the same thing which doesn't happen with other games, from my understanding.

2 nights ago I was watching this stream of a platinum Cammy player on a legitimate 55 win streak. They were kind of on auto pilot and accidentally accepted a match against a 1 bar silver chun. And there was literally nothing he could do to stop himself losing. There was no information for him to use because the rollback was so severe. My point being, regardless of the netcode, the lag should be visible on both ends.

 

[ImBarryScott]

probably like every other game ive ever played where both parties will lag

Fighting games?

I'll have to try it out tonight but I can't see how flooding your network won't affect incoming packets as well as outgoing. It should make the game unplayable for you too.

 

[ImBarryScott]

The issue is that only one player sees the lag, not both seeing the same thing which doesn't happen with other games, from my understanding.

2 nights ago I was watching this stream of a platinum Cammy player on a legitimate 55 win streak. They were kind of on auto pilot and accidentally accepted a match against a 1 bar silver chun. And there was literally nothing he could do to stop himself losing. There was no information for him to use because the rollback was so severe. My point being, regardless of the netcode, the lag should be visible on both ends.

If ever there were a case for a legitimate rage quit

I find it difficult to believe the lag isn't on both ends. The game isn't client/server. If you have high latency to them then they have high latency to you too.

 

[vg260]

I find it difficult to believe the lag isn't on both ends. The game isn't client/server. If you have high latency to them then they have high latency to you too.

That's what people are claiming, that's it's potentially one-sided.

 

[dawid]

Do any of you know how much work a netcode for a game actually needs?
If so, what is the perfect amount of developers working on a netcode if i might ask?

One senior developer working for maybe over a year is a lot of hours. Probably a lot more than what Carmack put in to create to-this-day impressive systems like the netcode in the Quake series. Plus today netcode-architects probably have a lot of old work to lean back on, unlike back then.

Plus, the guys work was probably under supervision of a bigger team of experienced software architects.

 

[TGMIII]

If ever there were a case for a legitimate rage quit

I find it difficult to believe the lag isn't on both ends. The game isn't client/server. If you have high latency to them then they have high latency to you too.

It's not "lag" that is causing the issue 99% of the time, it's that SFVs netcode seemingly never does a sync-check for both players so if it does lose sync then you're out of luck.

Mike Z of Lab Zero (Skullgirls) made a post talking about this issue:

To clarify:

THE BASIC PROBLEM, that one player experiences no rollbacks and the other player experiences severe rollbacks, AFFECTS BOTH PC AND PS4.

It is likely that if you are consistently having flawless matches on medium- or high-ping connections, the other player is experiencing all the rollbacks.

The culprit is not the alt-tab, it's the fact that the netcode does not handle time-syncing between the two machines properly. One machine can end up "ahead" of the other. That's the basis of the problem, because when one player is ahead, they are constantly getting inputs from the other player "late" so they are rolling back a lot, whereas the other player is usually getting all the inputs they need when they need them, and doesn't roll back at all. If the game properly handled syncing, like GGPO does, then the other player's game would slow down for a microscopic moment to correct for your alt-tab hiccup, and both players would continue to experience about half of the possible rollbacks each.

Alt-tab allows PC players to shift the situation to their advantage, but that is not the actual problem! Even if you are only playing against PS4 players, this problem can and will still happen to you.

 

[c0de]

Well at least it had 100% more personnel than those that worked on the offline content.

Perhaps he also had to do the training mode in his spare time.

 

[Zafir]

That's what people are claiming, that's it's potentially one-sided.

People talk about tabbing or backing out of the app inducing beneficial lag, but the one time when I accidentally clicked the share button during an online match(My jeans brushed past the button on the stick) I had ridiculously bad lag and I couldn't do shit against the opponent. They seemed to be getting lag, but they were just rush-downing me.

It's not "lag" that is causing the issue 99% of the time, it's that SFVs netcode seemingly never does a sync-check for both players so if it does lose sync then you're out of luck.

Mike Z of Lab Zero (Skullgirls) made a post talking about this issue:

That makes sense.

 

[ImBarryScott]

That's what people are claiming, that's it's potentially one-sided.

I'm going to try some tests out for myself because I can't see how that's possible. The only way you could get zero lag in such a situation is if you were acting as the server in a client server topology and that's definitely not how SFV works. If I'm wrong then I'll retract my statement about how good the net code is. But we'll see.

Do any of you know how much work a netcode for a game actually needs?
If so, what is the perfect amount of developers working on a netcode if i might ask?

I should probably be careful what I say but one good network coder on the actual gameplay network coding seems fine to me. Especially over seven years. It wouldn't surprise me if that was the case, put it that way.

 

[Kouriozan]

Something is weird, SF4 sold pretty well with all its versions, and here they had no money for a sequel, had to get Sony's money and they still wanted to use as little money as possible?
Is this because they blew everything into mobile and it has yet to make big cash?

 

[ImBarryScott]

It's not "lag" that is causing the issue 99% of the time, it's that SFVs netcode seemingly never does a sync-check for both players so if it does lose sync then you're out of luck.

Mike Z of Lab Zero (Skullgirls) made a post talking about this issue:

Ah, that's really interesting and I guess, yeah, that is possible (and pretty bad). I'll give it a try myself and see. So the issue is that all of the prediction and rollback mechanics etc. are based off a latency which is set at the beginning of the fight and never updated. Still, if that is the case then it's a relatively simple fix too.

 

[nkarafo]

Why would a huge company like Capcom do such a thing?

 

[vg260]

Do any of you know how much work a netcode for a game actually needs?
If so, what is the perfect amount of developers working on a netcode if i might ask?

One senior developer working for maybe over a year is a lot of hours. Probably a lot more than what Carmack put in to create to-this-day impressive systems like the netcode in the Quake series. Plus today netcode-architects probably have a lot of old work to lean back on, unlike back then.

Plus, the guys work was probably under supervision of a bigger team of experienced software architects.

These are good questions, although about the CFN part this person developed, not the netcode.

Some more context would be very helpful.