Smoothclients 1 Options

[Sigma-Chi]

Posted: Sun Mar 23, 2003 12:11 pm Post subject: cg_smoothclients 1, what it does

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Smoothclients set to 1 has to do with delaying frames. There is something called a smoothing buffer, which essentially takes snapshots from the server and delays them before they become available to the client. This is done to make movement smoother, hence the command "smoothclients".

cg_smoothclients:
Also this setting helps smooth out movement when other players have packet loss, very low rate or low cl_maxpackets. Normally you would see them stutter or warp on your screen in multiplayer. Setting this cvar to "1" adds extra prediction code for such clients and their movements as seen by you should be less erractic. One side effect of enabling this option is that prediction errors can occur. Do not use cg_smoothclients if you are using a negative cl_timenudge.

cl_timenudge:
This is similar to pushlatency in HalfLife, defaults to 0 which is our suggested setting for online play. In Quake3 it is normally used for offline bot practice by using a positive value that is the same as average ping. However, a positive value can also be used to stabilize displayed frames with gameworld updates(snaps) and negative values are reported to adjust client side prediction.

We strongly suggest you leave cl_timenudge at 0 for online play. However If you do wish to alter cl_timenudge to adjust client side prediction then try a negative value that is 25% to 50% of your average ping. Example if you are currently pinging 100 to the server then experiment with a setting between -25 to -50 as your cl_timenudge value. Note that if you are using a negative value for cl_timenudge the top graph in cg_lagometer may be mostly yellow.

A positive value may help if you have problems with gameworld updates (snaps) not being rendered in time. Try a small positive cl_timenudge value of 5,10,15 or 20 never higher. See cg_lagometer for an explanation of how to determine if gameworld updates are not being rendered in time.

Do not use a negative cl_timenudge if you are enabling cg_smoothclients.

This was some info taken from German and various Quake3 sites.

[FaG KillA]

Thanks for the detailed description Sigma-Chi and let me add some things here. First this information is from a quake site and although it is totally correct, remember that EA heavily modified the engine in this game so you need to be careful when doing comparisons of the game settings. As to the smoothclients command it indeed does what Chi says so you first question is why would you even turn it off? Good question. Apparently, the embedded command is in a dll file and is turned on in MOHAA by default. It was also turned on in the original version of Spearhead and in the 2.11 version. EA in an attempt to get rid of the warping effects that were prevelant in the 2.11 Spearhead turned it OFF by default in 2.15. That is why we are havig to manually turn it back on to fix the aiming issues. It is yet again another sign of he ineptness of their support team and another pain in the ass for us.

As for turing it on for good you can follow these steps for that;

Find a file called newconfig.cfg in your mainta directory. Make sure you are in mainta because you will probably have a file just like it in main. Open this file with a text editor and it should look something like this.

//
// Video Card Family: OpenGL
// Video Card Driver: NV17M 43.00
//
// Mhz 1100
// Vidmem 64
// Sysmem 256
//

seta cg_drawviewmodel 2
seta r_fastdlights 0
seta r_fastentlight 0
seta r_subdivisions 4
seta r_lodscale 0.55
seta r_lodcap 0.5
seta r_lodviewmodelcap 0.55
seta cg_effectdetail 0.8
seta vss_maxcount 15
seta ter_error 4
seta ter_maxlod 6
seta ter_maxtris 24576

There will be many other lines here I just grabbed a few and these files are hardware dependent so yours will NOT be exactly like this as this is only an example. In front of the first seta command add a line and type in the following;

seta cg_smoothclients 1

Then save the file and your all set. Since this is a global one time command make SURE you type in seta not just set.

Now you can just launch the game and start playing without typing the command in every time.