Add /positionpacketdelay to reduce latency jitter on good connections

[Calinou]

AssaultCube currently uses a 25 Hz network update rate. Given the game's focus on low-end hardware, this is probably fine¹, but we can improve the situation by making clients (optionally) send input/position data more often.

Sending client data more often to the server would result in less jittering. Therefore, players will appear appear to move in a more stable fashion. This could be exposed as a /positionpacketdelay variable which would default to 40 (= 25 Hz), but could be decreased as low as 8 (= 125 Hz) for those with good ADSL, cable or fiber connections. In the long run, the default setting could also be decreased to a value such as 20 (= 50 Hz) after doing some playtesting on less-than-ideal connections such as 4G.

See this page for a detailed explanation, as well as redeclipse/base#982.

Footnotes

1. It may be worthwhile to consider increasing the server update rate to 30 Hz, which happens to be exactly half of 60 Hz – the monitor refresh rate used by most casual players. ↩

[ynotinteractive]

Excellent idea. Would this give players with better systems a competitive advantage though?

[Calinou]

Excellent idea. Would this give players with better systems a competitive advantage though?

I think decreasing this variable is a mixed bag in terms of competitive advantage. While your shots will be fired a bit earlier, your position will also be updated earlier and more reliably, which makes it easier for enemies to track you with their crosshair when moving.