Lag a 'huge problem' for Street Fighter IV online

by Randy Nelson on Aug 28th 2008 4:00AM

The UK's official Xbox 360 magazine posed an inevitable question to Street Fighter IV producer Yoshinori Ono: How's it going to play online? For his part, Ono was quite frank, saying, "Obviously lag will be a huge problem for online play. We're working on it. It's quite difficult for 3D Street Fighter at the moment."

Asked how the developer is going about, er, combating the problem, Ono got technical. "In order to prevent the lag we're thinking about trying to balance it up at [the] user interface level and input timing," he said. "We still haven't got a complete plan as yet. We're still working on it. That's all we can say at the moment." Okay ... we'll let you get back to that, then.

Source

Tags: capcom, PC, PS3, street-fighter-iv, Xbox-360, yoshinori-ono

Reader Comments (52)

I always thought there was a switch they just turned on that made lag go bye bye hahahahaha. Well all kidding aside I always thought lag was a latency problem or could be solved by being connected to people with a low ping.

lag == high ping or high latency

a lot people believe lag == low bandwidth

Yea but we all know thats not the case. Fighting games more than anything I can think of require VERY low latency. I would say below 50ms. The only way to get that is to play on very localized servers with close by people.

Low bandwith can cause what you'd perceive to be lag. Lag is more of a catch all phrase to mean anything that is slower than the norm. If the frames per second drop, people go "Damn this lag!" etc.

Dead or Alive 4 found a fairly decent way to enable online play. As long as you are connected to people in the same country, it works fine most of the time. If they can't get it right in SFIV after other games have already done it, then there are going to be a whole load of sad fans.

17ms is how long it takes for 1 frame to animate (in a 60 frame game like most fighters). Less than 17ms would be optimal, but obviously not viable. Typically, less than 50ms is acceptable in most online games, and would translate to about 3 frames in a fighter. There are plenty of things in previous fighters that take even as low as 1 frame to execute (like the retarded frame traps in SF2), but online play, as far as fighters go, has never really been the main stage for super-competitive play.

Usually when lag happens on a new games it's either one of 2 things.

Servers are overloaded/Developers didn't expect demand.

Not enough beta testing went into the network code...

Also if my comment that I made above turns out to be so freaking incredibly wrong about what I said about lag please dear god I beg of the masses to not humilate me. PLEASE!!!! That is all LOL

Had-d-d-d-ou-k-k-k-k-k.................eee-n-n !

+1, because I could actually see that in my mind.

Now, i can understand why Goku took from 2 to 3 chapters launching a Kamehameha

Dear Yoshinori Ono,

Please take as much time as needed and do whatever it takes to Street Fighter IV's online play so that it does not end up like the online play in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. That game's online ranged from decent to downright terrible. I am willing to wait for an extended period of time if I do not have to experience that atrocity with another one of my favorite fighting game series.

Thank you,

xeleion

I like how you are all serious, but then sign with your fake name.

If he did, Fernando and samfish would track him down...

And then shake his hand!

Man, can't find why everyone is complaining of Smash online beign to lagged. I hardly find any lag on it

But still, if they have to delay the launch of SFIV to fix the lag issue, be my guest

CJ, I don't know how you didn't experience any lag; there was up to half a second of input lag most of the time. I've had people tell me they've played lagless matches, but I find it hard to believe.

Use GGPO net code?

GGPO is a p2p matchup service, while Xbox Live goes through a central server. It might be difficult to use GGPO algorithms over a central server, but I'm not 100% sure netcode works.

You can't eliminate lag, but you can limit it's effects...

The obvious method is to do a latency test before every match, and deny connections to laggy connections, like many FPS servers. Though given that you probably need almost instant feedback, I don't think most internet lines are fast (in terms of latency) enough to handle such timings...

Well, mostly the only way to eliminate lag is to trick the player into not noticing it.

That's what he appeared to be saying about doing it at the user interface level and input timings.

That's how most Xbox Live games do it...UI-level programming.

The lag is out there.

He seems to be saying he will try to make the input timings more forgiving so the player doesn't feel the lag, but he says he's not 100% sure how they will do it. The thing about fighters is that you have to make it so that each player is seeing the same exact state; it's not like FPS or racing games where you just send "you are here" signals to the server; then again, I'm not claiming to know exactly how netcode works.

those crazy japanese dev. havent cracked the online code yet...

See the problem is, lag gets into bed with anyone, so it becomes a slag, this in turn makes it a lady of the night with a bad reputation, slow and not as sharp as it used to be, so when it does find the 'right one', its nowhere near as good as the lag that waited to become faster :)

Timing is everything in a fighting game. Take the time you need to make it RIGHT!

We've got a lots of broadband users, but an advertised speed doesn't mean it's going to be stable. Seriously, I thought by now latency in games would've been a thing of the past. Wrong =(

was watching this in a japanese arcade yesterday... it looks really nice in motion on a big screen.

Can't comment on how it plays though, dunno anything about SF.

Hey, even if you'd never played the series, at least Joystiq would still let you preview it!

Although to be serious, I don't think I've seen that in a while (or Zack Stern (head previewer) as a matter of fact). Keep up the good work I guess?

No excuses. My DOA4 lagged a bit, but Soul Caliber 4 plays perfect (except is drops the room sometimes) with NO lag. And that's playing people overseas. If Namco can do it, Capcom can do it.

DOA4 is different.

The game absorbs the lag while it's computing all the character... "animations."

The lag with two male characters is significantly more noticeable.

They should try reversing the polarity.

SF4 should try and learn from SC4

i don't get lag when im playing someone with a good connection on soul calibur 4. Its nearly perfect. So Street fighter should be able to play without lag as well

SCIV (like most other fighters) is not nearly as technical or demanding a game as SFIV. They're not even in the same ballpark in terms of timing and skill.

@emagius:

You sure about that? some of the 'just input' moves in soul calibur are pretty tight... for example.

I tend not to think that timing is any less critical in soul calibur than in pretty much any other fighting game.

Though, then again, I don't really play much SF... only played Third Strike(coz makoto's cute.), so I wouldn't really know. And it seems(I might be wrong) to me that you don't sound like you play much Soul Calibur either, if you think timing ain't as critical in it as in SF.

I play both competitively and can confirm emagius's comment. Timing in SF is much more crucial than in SC. There are combos in SF that require frame-perfect timing, whereas in SC, it's wholly possible to chain together combos by chance while just mashing. Even Tekken requires more frame precision than SC. That said, they STILL had to loosen up the timing on the just impacts for SC so that lag would be less noticeable during online play. Granted, my pipe is nowhere near a 10mbps line, but I've had significant lag ruin matches even when my opponent is just one major city away.

SC4 lags, but it tricks you using input forgiveness and whatnot. There are plenty of tricks fighters have to use to hide lag; even a 50ms lag in a fighter is highly noticeble, especially with an experienced player.

I have a radical idea. The lag swings both ways. We could reverse the particle flow through the gate.

How?

*hesitates* We'll cross the streams.

Yea... well whatever. I hope this can be resolved with a patch as well. I must have this game.

When he said it was going to be a huge problem, he meant that it's a big design challenge. People are interpreting it as if he said it's going to suck in the finished product.

I mean, it's entirely possible that it will, but give the guy a break.

Most developers would have said "No problem, it'll be butter-smooth" regardless of whether or not they could deliver.

hmmmm i wonder if all the lag is on the ps3? I cant see there being true lag on the 360 because microsoft does not connect you to someone with lag.

In a fighting game (particularly one like SF and especially with experienced players) a 100ms lag or less is highly noticeable, while on an FPS, 100ms lag might be considered acceptable (but experienced FPS players might tell you 50ms is the maximum acceptable ping).

Not sure about the rest of you, but I've got ZERO interest in this game, along with every other fighter out there. If it's not in an arcade it's always been tough for me to get into. Now, if this turns out to be GOTY by any chance, the only way I'm playing this is if I buy sticks to play it. Gamepads just don't cut it for me, too much time in those ol' smoke filled scary arcades, damn I miss them :P

Yeah, I'm also sad about the decline of arcades. The main arcade around my area is getting closed down because the city wants to buy a new road. My best bet to play SF4 in an arcade would be the small arcade at my university. It seems like there's no arcade scene in the US unless you live in California or the North Atlantic.

lag or no lag, a game that contains a money shot from the first person perspective is still worth a shot. I mean that IS whats flying at bison's face right?

No lagging way!

http://www.squidoo.com/doughboy

Any serious fight gamer knows that online play is a waste of time b/c of the lag and frames you miss. Best to do it oldschool. Online is just for the hell of it. I'm sure people will find moves to exploit the lag anyway.

Agreed, I tried playing the original on XBLA and I nearly threw the controller out the window.

--
Embrace The Fear
http://friendfighter.blogspot.com

Has anyone here played Street Fighter Alpha 3 using the emulator FinalBurnAlpha? It has a netplay option and I play it with my friend in Canada (while I'm in Virginia, USA) all the time. The lag is minimal at worst.

Capcom, it can't be that hard. (inb4 "but 3D is more data!" No it's not. Shut up. Also, I like pie.)

Virtua Fighter 5 has practically NO lag in online play. If an exceedingly complex 3d fighter can do it, than SF IV has no excuse.

Had-d-d-d-ou-k-k-k-k-k.................eee-n-n !

........Oh sorry I was lagging, so I didn't see d1srupt0r already wrote that.

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Lag a 'huge problem' for Street Fighter IV online

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