because I wind up explaining this too often here's a quick and dirty guide to fixing your lerp for dodgeball.
What is lerp?
lerp is a delay added to the game as a means of smoothing out gameplay during ping spikes and random latency variations by linearly extrapolating where people and objects are and trying to account for latency to provide more stable gameplay for players with bad connections. sounds generally like a good idea right? if your ping spikes by a little bit briefly, during normal play or during a ping-spike there will be instances where your copy of the game has no information about the gamestate. That causes jittery movement, terrible hit detection, and a bunch of other nasty things. To deal with this, the client keeps a buffer and uses it to exterapolate what's going to happen next and smooth things out. The length of that buffer is relevant to your lerp value and ping. The problem is that this adds lag. It's another tenth of a second delay before a rocket you reflect actually does so, It's another tenth of a second you're behind the server. It's another tenth of a second where you don't know what people are doing. The problem with lerp is that the default lerp is value 100ms, which is massive. If your ping spikes by that much, you're experiencing a problem with your connection that can't be fixed just by adjusting the interp values. Ideally Lerp should be as low as it possibly can be while still being able to do its job without negatively affecting the rest of the game.
Why is high lerp bad for dodgeball?
High lerp in Dodgeball smooths things out in a bad way. because of the interpolation you wind up having less control over the rocket (flicks and drags are not as effective) and having an odd visually out-of-sync window to reflect that gets more and more noticeable as the rocket speeds up. If you've noticed fast rockets suddenly seeming to slow-down mid-flight and messing with your reflect timing or even dying before the rocket gets close to you chances are that is a direct result of your interp kicking in quite harshly.
How can I see what what my lerp is?
First thing's first. You have to enable developer console (if you haven't already). To do that hit escape, go to options(gear icon) and click 'advanced' on the first tab. There will only be a couple of options, the one you want is 'enable developer console' so tick the box for that and apply it.
Once you have the developer console enabled you can type "net_graph 1" into the console, this will display your fps, accurate ping (The scoreboard does not show an accurate reflection of your ping but rather an averaged value that can be affected by rates) in and out network rates, as well as lerp. You can type the command net_graph 0 to turn it off. There are various other net_graphs that display graphed charts to help identify network issues like spikes, but you won't need those for simply finding out your current lerp value.
OK I get it but how do I fix it?
To change your lerp you'll need to drop out of the game server you're on if you're on one. (you cannot change interp settings mid-game anymore as there was a potential for abuse so valve disallowed it). Once you've done so input the following commands to console:
cl_interp 0; cl_interp_ratio 0; cl_updaterate 60000;
This will set your interp to to 0.00017 and is the lowest setting i'll recommend for dodgeball- where lower is better. These settings should make the rocket feel more responsive to flicks, drags, and reflects at higher speeds (you won't have to preemptively airblast as much as you would with higher lerp) and will also reduce the amount of "i swear i hit that but the server said no you didn't" that you encounter as well as reducing or outright removing the dying before the rocket reaches you effect caused by high lerp. If you've played a lot of dodgeball these changes may take some getting used to but you should overall feel that there is a world of difference with lower interp and overall it will help you improve as a player.
If you have a high ping or unstable connection or otherwise notice the rocket skipping you may wish to turn this up a bit by adjusting the values.
What do these commands do?
cl_interp - is the base value for interpolation.
cl_interp_ratio - acts as a multiplier for cl_interp and should always be a whole number for obvious reasons.
cl_updaterate - changes the rate at which the server will send you updates about the game-state. This should generally be set at 60000 for best results.
cl_cmdrate - changes the rate at which you client sends updates to the server. Chances are your upstream bandwidth is much lower than your downstream bandwidth, and I recommend keeping this at the default value of 66.
( For the curious, you can learn more about source engine networking by visiting valve's docs AT THIS LINK )
What about other game modes?
for different game-modes and classes different interp values might be recommended. (eg hitscan classes like sniper may benefit from different values than projectile classes like soldier, but that's not what this quick settings guide is about so i'll leave that alone. a little google-fu can net you plenty of discussion about the best interp values for each class type and i'll leave it to you to fuss with values for game modes other than dodgeball. Generally 33.3ms is a respectable value for lerp in other game-modes. If your ping is spiking by more than that on a regular basis chances are that there's something wrong with your network connection.
What is lerp?
lerp is a delay added to the game as a means of smoothing out gameplay during ping spikes and random latency variations by linearly extrapolating where people and objects are and trying to account for latency to provide more stable gameplay for players with bad connections. sounds generally like a good idea right? if your ping spikes by a little bit briefly, during normal play or during a ping-spike there will be instances where your copy of the game has no information about the gamestate. That causes jittery movement, terrible hit detection, and a bunch of other nasty things. To deal with this, the client keeps a buffer and uses it to exterapolate what's going to happen next and smooth things out. The length of that buffer is relevant to your lerp value and ping. The problem is that this adds lag. It's another tenth of a second delay before a rocket you reflect actually does so, It's another tenth of a second you're behind the server. It's another tenth of a second where you don't know what people are doing. The problem with lerp is that the default lerp is value 100ms, which is massive. If your ping spikes by that much, you're experiencing a problem with your connection that can't be fixed just by adjusting the interp values. Ideally Lerp should be as low as it possibly can be while still being able to do its job without negatively affecting the rest of the game.
Why is high lerp bad for dodgeball?
High lerp in Dodgeball smooths things out in a bad way. because of the interpolation you wind up having less control over the rocket (flicks and drags are not as effective) and having an odd visually out-of-sync window to reflect that gets more and more noticeable as the rocket speeds up. If you've noticed fast rockets suddenly seeming to slow-down mid-flight and messing with your reflect timing or even dying before the rocket gets close to you chances are that is a direct result of your interp kicking in quite harshly.
How can I see what what my lerp is?
First thing's first. You have to enable developer console (if you haven't already). To do that hit escape, go to options(gear icon) and click 'advanced' on the first tab. There will only be a couple of options, the one you want is 'enable developer console' so tick the box for that and apply it.
Once you have the developer console enabled you can type "net_graph 1" into the console, this will display your fps, accurate ping (The scoreboard does not show an accurate reflection of your ping but rather an averaged value that can be affected by rates) in and out network rates, as well as lerp. You can type the command net_graph 0 to turn it off. There are various other net_graphs that display graphed charts to help identify network issues like spikes, but you won't need those for simply finding out your current lerp value.
OK I get it but how do I fix it?
To change your lerp you'll need to drop out of the game server you're on if you're on one. (you cannot change interp settings mid-game anymore as there was a potential for abuse so valve disallowed it). Once you've done so input the following commands to console:
cl_interp 0; cl_interp_ratio 0; cl_updaterate 60000;
This will set your interp to to 0.00017 and is the lowest setting i'll recommend for dodgeball- where lower is better. These settings should make the rocket feel more responsive to flicks, drags, and reflects at higher speeds (you won't have to preemptively airblast as much as you would with higher lerp) and will also reduce the amount of "i swear i hit that but the server said no you didn't" that you encounter as well as reducing or outright removing the dying before the rocket reaches you effect caused by high lerp. If you've played a lot of dodgeball these changes may take some getting used to but you should overall feel that there is a world of difference with lower interp and overall it will help you improve as a player.
If you have a high ping or unstable connection or otherwise notice the rocket skipping you may wish to turn this up a bit by adjusting the values.
What do these commands do?
cl_interp - is the base value for interpolation.
cl_interp_ratio - acts as a multiplier for cl_interp and should always be a whole number for obvious reasons.
cl_updaterate - changes the rate at which the server will send you updates about the game-state. This should generally be set at 60000 for best results.
cl_cmdrate - changes the rate at which you client sends updates to the server. Chances are your upstream bandwidth is much lower than your downstream bandwidth, and I recommend keeping this at the default value of 66.
( For the curious, you can learn more about source engine networking by visiting valve's docs AT THIS LINK )
What about other game modes?
for different game-modes and classes different interp values might be recommended. (eg hitscan classes like sniper may benefit from different values than projectile classes like soldier, but that's not what this quick settings guide is about so i'll leave that alone. a little google-fu can net you plenty of discussion about the best interp values for each class type and i'll leave it to you to fuss with values for game modes other than dodgeball. Generally 33.3ms is a respectable value for lerp in other game-modes. If your ping is spiking by more than that on a regular basis chances are that there's something wrong with your network connection.
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