Kayane interviews Katsuhiro Harada of Namco

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Thanks for replying :)

So basically GGPO does nothing to actually reduce latency, but it makes just frames and such easier? It surely doesn't hurt, but it seems to me that Soul Calibur isn't a game where people have troubles with combos and just frames online. Well, I have huge troubles with Xianghua's one and only just frame, but I think that's mostly because I suck at it :(

Another solution could be to simply make just frames easier to do in online mode.
GGPO DOES reduce latency. SC4 always delays your input, while GGPO only delays your input with a very small constant amount (20ms or something). That means you can react to stuff in a more natural way. The fancy schmancy parts of GGPO deals with the inevitable desyncs.

Basically, these are the cons of each system when it comes down to pure gameplay:
SC4/Old style netcode: High input lag.
GGPO: Periodic weird sudden abrupt movement of the other player as the game resyncs (you might also have a few cases of where you hit the opponent, and then a splitsecond later he actually blocked it instead).
 
But a face like butter

0_O You're joking, right? She's really pretty. And her accent is damn cute. Especially when Harada asks if she wants to hear about Soul Calibur and she says "Yes. Of course," and how she says "Project Soul," and pretty much everything else. French accents are ridiculously cute. XD

Anyways, nice interview, Kayane. I can't wait for SCV's release. Unfortunately, I have to, haha.
 
They don't want to implement GGPO because they'd have to admit that they've been trading on the same outdated engines for both of the series' for the past 3 games.

The truth is, implementing GGPO depends alot on if the basic programming of the game can be modified to accept it; how it handles data, ect. Basically, the engines of Tekken and SC are not suited for it, and it would require some time to re-write the engines, which they are clearly unwilling to do.

-Idle
I agree, total factual. They've gone lazy since SC3. SC2 was the last advancement as in programming. Could Namco do an online refined SC2 using GGPO at least?
 
GGPO DOES reduce latency. SC4 always delays your input, while GGPO only delays your input with a very small constant amount (20ms or something). That means you can react to stuff in a more natural way. The fancy schmancy parts of GGPO deals with the inevitable desyncs.

Basically, these are the cons of each system when it comes down to pure gameplay:
SC4/Old style netcode: High input lag.
GGPO: Periodic weird sudden abrupt movement of the other player as the game resyncs (you might also have a few cases of where you hit the opponent, and then a splitsecond later he actually blocked it instead).

I can't just accept claims as truth without an explanation of how it works. As I've already said, all the explanations I've been able to find use phrases like "lagless illusion" and "latency hiding". These are just PR explanations and do nothing to make us understand the details of how this technique works. If it truly does reduce latency, then why doesn't it say so in the official explanation? It makes me very suspicious.

The way I understand it is that GGPO simply displays what happens locally before syncronizing with the opponent. If later, the outcome of the sync confirms what has already been displayed, then all is good. However, if the sync invalidates what has already been displayed, a rollback will occur back to that point. This will in effect "rewind" what is being displayed on the screen and continue on from a few moments before, but with a different outcome.

Note that the above is just how I interpret the official explanation and might not be correct, but let's say that I am: This will make your own moves come out with no input lag as if playing offline, making combos and especially just frames easier (just like Windie said). But your opponent's actions will still be affected by latency, making reacting to lows and punishing fast moves just as hard/impossible as usual.
 
(latency stuff)

I resisted posting about this earlier, I just got in trouble for the subject on SRK :p

But it doesn't reduce latency at all, because latency is the time it takes for the 2 systems to communicate, and you can't reduce that below a certain degree. People sometimes (like in the case of the post you're quoting, I think) use 'latency' (or those PR phrases you mentioned) to mean the effect on inputs, and in that sense rollback is very effective at hiding it. Or it doesn't hide it at all. Which is the whole trick, especially at higher levels of lag.
 
Awkward/large nose, protruding teeth, and huge eyebrows. She appears to have nice skin but her accent is horrible, like an inner city store owner horrible.

I went ahead and underlined the only true statement in that XD

I usually try to respect everyone's opinions, but you're wrong. She's hot. And French accents are still ridiculously cute... I think I might like to meet that store owner ;)

Anywho, this has very little... Actually nothing to do with the interview.

They should make some big advancements in the engine, and I think they will because (if I remember correctly) Daishi said something about revamping it a few months back. Better online would be nice... If I could ever get Live to work! Arg... Technology hates me, haha.

A Soul Calibur movie? Maybe... If they could do it right, but for some reason I doubt it. Unlike most, I tend to like fighting game movies, if only for laughs. But I don't know about a SC movie.
 
I can't just accept claims as truth without an explanation of how it works. As I've already said, all the explanations I've been able to find use phrases like "lagless illusion" and "latency hiding". These are just PR explanations and do nothing to make us understand the details of how this technique works. If it truly does reduce latency, then why doesn't it say so in the official explanation? It makes me very suspicious.

The way I understand it is that GGPO simply displays what happens locally before syncronizing with the opponent. If later, the outcome of the sync confirms what has already been displayed, then all is good. However, if the sync invalidates what has already been displayed, a rollback will occur back to that point. This will in effect "rewind" what is being displayed on the screen and continue on from a few moments before, but with a different outcome.

Note that the above is just how I interpret the official explanation and might not be correct, but let's say that I am: This will make your own moves come out with no input lag as if playing offline, making combos and especially just frames easier (just like Windie said). But your opponent's actions will still be affected by latency, making reacting to lows and punishing fast moves just as hard/impossible as usual.
I'd say it's just semantics. Latency is an inevitable obstacle with online gaming and it's literally impossible to remove it entirely, so the big question is how to reduce its effect on gameplay or hide it as best possible.

Your explanation of it is correct. Just remember it works the same for both clients. Your actions are shown right away, and on the opponent's screen his actions appears right away too. If your opponent is idle and you do a quick attack, you'll see him be hit... but on his screen he might have had time to block, so in that case a desync happens, the game will roll back and you'll get the new present where he did block your attack and you'll see the change. I imagine these rollbacks will happen almost constantly as even small movements would cause a desync.

I feel a bit stupid that I haven't actually tested GGPO much myself. I know a lot about it theoretically, but I'm curious how visible these rollbacks are in practice.

Edit: I find it amusing there's 2 wildly different discussions going on. One technical discussion about netcode... and one discussion about a cute girl :-P
 
sectus: How visible they are depends wildly on the amount of information the game has to send and the way it 'guesses' (that's a technical part I'm really not sure on myself either, should try to figure that out. Pretty sure tho' that that element is what differentiates rollback systems), and the amount of actual latency (both being pretty common sense actually).

The only fighter that people have actually likely played much of (not counting PC GGPO which has a large number of inherent advantages to the platform) is SSF2:HDR. I don't know if anybody still plays that, but going and playing a good stack of games should give you a good feel for how it feels.

I should say, the system really does work better in my experience, the real problem is on the other end with console resources... Which is why you get the 'developers say it can't work! fans say it can!' problem (and why the ggpo developers keep saying 'just reduce the specs on your game and use our product!')
 
Lol more people were focused on how sexy Kayane is rather than the actually interview. I too am a victim but this GGPO thing is very interesting I just read up on it, never heard of it until now. It'd be a lot better for online play if this was implemented.
 
I'm so glad that the people working on the game understand how important it is for an Arcade version to happen. As for whether or not it will happen....

(ノ`m´)ノ ~┻━┻
 
umm i don t know if this gpo could go well on a game like soulcalibur...

If i understood well it just run the game separately on both consoles and transmith command inputs with occasional sync on events...

That would result in odd behavior of the game OR more probably in huge frame inconsistencies.

In games like Street fighters frames are less important than on soulcalibur ...

that if i understood correctly considering the scarce informations about this ggpo
 
Nice interview. Like Kayane said in the youtube comments, she thought that she'd do the interview in French, but just moments before it was about to start, it turns out that the translator only spoke English and Japanese so she had to wing it. Considering all that, she did ok... and I think she's cute.

There's one thing I don't understand. If Japanese gaming communities need arcade-like environments, why don't they have LAN centers and such. You know, public venues with a bunch of PCs and consoles where you can play games against eachother (fighting, racing, FPS, RTS etc.). There you could build offline commmunities with games that have no arcade release. They already have manga- and interent-cafés and such so why not "gaming cafés"? Or are the big arcade giants somehow preventing that from happening?
 
Nice interview. Like Kayane said in the youtube comments, she thought that she'd do the interview in French, but just moments before it was about to start, it turns out that the translator only spoke English and Japanese so she had to wing it. Considering all that, she did ok... and I think she's cute.

There's one thing I don't understand. If Japanese gaming communities need arcade-like enviroments, why don't they have LAN centers and such. You know, public venues with bunch of PCs and consoles where you can play games against eachother (fighting, racing, FPS, RTS etc.). There you could build offline commmunities with games that have no arcade release. They already have manga- and interent-cafés and such so why not "gaming cafés"? Or are the big arcade giants somehow preventing that from happening?
They have that in Korea. Every region is different. It's a kind of a culture thing.
 
I don't care about GGPO, get me arcades.

Times a million. I'd have to drive 3 hours for an arcade that would have any chance of having it, but still. Even if it delays the console release, and arcade version would almost certainly mean a better product by the time it got all the way down to the rest of us.
 
There's one thing I don't understand. If Japanese gaming communities need arcade-like environments, why don't they have LAN centers and such. You know, public venues with a bunch of PCs and consoles where you can play games against eachother (fighting, racing, FPS, RTS etc.). There you could build offline commmunities with games that have no arcade release. They already have manga- and interent-cafés and such so why not "gaming cafés"? Or are the big arcade giants somehow preventing that from happening?
It's more like, I could make all that effort for likely dubious benefit. Or I could play Tekken at the arcade.
 
they should be smart and adjust offline so that eventual online lag could hinder less the game (note that this doesn t mean it would require less skill)...but for what i've seen atm they are not smart and did the exact opposite :|

If in 2011 they haven t yet understood that online is the business (most online centered games are also best seller today i think we all know the names....) well they will fail again.
 
they should be smart and adjust offline so that eventual online lag could hinder less the game (note that this doesn t mean it would require less skill)...but for what i've seen atm they are not smart and did the exact opposite :|

If in 2011 they haven t yet understood that online is the business (most online centered games are also best seller today i think we all know the names....) well they will fail again.

They understand, its just kind of a really difficult problem to solve technically. From the sound of it, they need to rebuild the Soulcalibur engine from the ground up (or do my version and license Unreal 3) to seriously fix these problems, and that's still a pretty big investment to make (altho one I'd like to see done).
 

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