Anti-latency (server-side hit detection / correction)

[Pooky]

Still prefer predictability over some of the wacky bullshit that happened on Halo 3 vOv

Also dedicated servers ftfw. Host advantage was huge in Halo 2 and still pretty annoying in 3 and Reach.

[p0lar_bear]

I had a screenshot of severe redirection in my Halo 3 files, I'll have to post it sometime..

Besides the awesome instance of lag where Trevor got sniped by a cloud?

I digress, it happened to me all too often with the sniper in H3. I vividly remember once taking a video of me headshotting someone three times on Valhalla with it and it didn't do a damn thing to him.

[t3h m00kz]

Lag? Or KARMA?

In trevor's case

[Mator]

Netcode is an ongoing issue. They are constantly trying new things. Some things work, some don't. :|

[t3h m00kz]

Any updates for us paulus? I'm really looking forward to this

[jcap]

I think he was trying to see if anyone else would be interested in picking it up

[t3h m00kz]

fuckballs

Well, if nobody does I'd say release it as it is now, otherwise it'll be one of those gems that gets locked away forever doing nothing but collecting virtual dust.

[justin108]

After reading this whole thread and having played this game since it came out, I have become used to the leading, it adds an aspect that I do not get anywhere else. Although I no longer play, the lead was one thing that kept me interested. I like the fact this game has a learning curve, when I first started I went negative every time. Even after not playing for a year, it would be hard to go negative now. I can only speak for myself here, but the "lead" and learning the difference in 33 vs 133 ping (or higher) is the difference of good or baddie. It took me years to figure it out (slow learner). Now I know how to lead shots, and I think of it as "bending" bullets (ex. "Wanted" style). So why change a game we have all come to love not despite the quirks but because of them? I wish I had time to play now, but I only randomly get to read the forums when I have a sitter or my kid is asleep, and I am not working on my own blog. I am shocked Korn and Jcap are still able to spend time on here, I am sure they lead busy lifestyles also. While I do find your help useful, ultimately I feel it is ages too late. HCEL certainly could have benefited from this if implemented server side. This is only my opinion, so take it for less than a grain of salt. As the forum reads it seems many want it.

[Patrickssj6]

You are not by any chance the Paulus who made the sheep/freeze trainer? :P

[PaulusT]

You are not by any chance the Paulus who made the sheep/freeze trainer? :P

Yes I am That was actually rather simple though The time freeze was taken from Sheep's trainer. I also made a trainer for Halo 2 that was more impressive from a technical point of view (not just poking values into memory), but still fairly basic (and I don't think it worked too well unless you found a DLL loader). I cannot even begin to imagine how some people are able to reverse engineer so well.

As for an update, I was indeed suggesting that someone else could attempt this, as I am going to be pretty busy for a while. I did have a quick attempt at finding potential functions to intercept; I believe (if I recall correctly) for the time-freeze hack (Halo 1 and 2), there are several functions that are called for every object in the game that needs updating. One of these was intercepted and changed to a no-op for all objects except the player. This made all objects freeze, except for the player. I believe it might be possible to intercept this function so that we check if the object to be updated belongs to a player and if so, move other objects (such as players) back appropriately. Then, move objects to their original position when the function returns.

I only did this very quickly, so I didn't even check if this is definitely the right function but:

Given Halo CE v1.09, with base address=0x00400000

0x0045C3A8 CALL haloce.004F8B20


Within the function, we reach:

0x004FBB80 PUSH ECX

I think at this point, the address of the object being updated is in a register (I can't check which one right now). Or, this may just be some other object address that is calculated, but the correct address should be calculated somewhere in the function.

I may get some time to look into this further, but if anyone is willing to contribute, it would be very much appreciated by most!

As for the arguments against fixing the lag:

It's too late: Fair enough, but I might quite like to have this for private matches with friends. Plus, people might consider this when Halo Anniversary multiplayer turns out to be nothing like the original (at least, I think that is confirmed to be the case).

Other: Halo 1 is not meant to have this lag. It was not meant to be played like this. The lag is essentially (almost) a bug, but one that the developers knew about and were never going to fix. The lag is inconsistent - players in the same server must usually lead different amounts and you must lead different amounts depending on the servers you play on. Consistent leading could be implemented on top of this fix (server-side), but it could be based on having slow bullets and could vary based on the weapon or other factors, which is probably preferable - having to lead in close-up battles makes no sense and is mostly luck!