LogFAQs > #935992931

paperwarior posted...

Ah, I see. The detailed explanation is what I was looking for but it's also good to know it really is way better.

To go for an actual attempt at an explanation...

So online play has some kind of an clock to track frame count. As long as a players online clocks are aligned an online game could theoretically be flawless, but obviously theres things to worry about like persons internet quality, distance, etc

Delay is the old school method. When the clocks dont match up the game will stop until everyone is on the same page. Thats why online games with delay will show the frames of delay, its a prediction of how often the game will have to stop to wait for players input but it can easily be wrong. Once delay gets to like 7+ frames thats why it can take forever to feel like your button presses take forever to come out (if they do)

So rollback, when done correctly, is a way for the game to predict the actions of both players then auto correct itself quickly once the clocks are aligned. Unlike delay where you can feel the lag of your buttons not coming out, you can press buttons and they'll be consistently responsive. The main thing is what you see your opponent doing. If rollback is done well (Skullgirls, Killer Instinct) there might be very slight corrections on the opponents animations or position on screen but otherwise should feel seamless. However when done terribly (Street Fighter V) one person will both see input delay AND the opppnent will suddenly "teleport" to a completely different action and position cuz the engine did a terrible job predicting and autocorrecting what the opponent was doing.

So tldr rollback when done well is seamless and much harder to tell theres lag/distance. However, rollback done poorly is arguably worse than delay AND unlike delay needs to be built ahead of time to deal with clock based stuff of engine. Japanese have been using delay since that was the old school method thats been working and you know Japanese and old school...

@paperwarior Hope it helps

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I have been more into visual novels and learning Japanese recently.
With some fighting games and Switch games on the side. https://twitter.com/superange128