never to late. ->> thx a lot man +)

RE: the way Half-Life handles bullets.

As far as I know, Half-Life uses "events", or pre-scripted sequences for most of the communication between client/server for visual effects. A client sends a keypress to the server, which then sends back a structure telling the client to play event #X at location (x, y, z). So the server only has to tell the client a very short message instead of lengthy information about individual particles and lighting, etc. Half-Life even goes one step further, at least in DM and TFC. When you fire a weapon, the client catches this, and displays the bullets shooting without confirmation from the server. So the bullet pattern the client sees may not exactly match what the server records, but it is close enough that players will generally not notice. This has the effect of lessening the appearance of "lag" to the client. Movement is another thing that is also predicted. Usually the client gets it right, based off the player's previous direction and speed, but the server has the final say (as I'm sure you've noticed in a very laggy game before).

I just noticed shurcool's post of those articles, but I don't want to waste all the typing I just did.

edit: oh wow, I didn't notice how old this post was

[edited by - unferth on September 4, 2003 2:36:12 AM]