Originally posted by MWAAAHAAA
Fall damage also seems ping related, theo ther day I was playing with a ridiculously high ping, and at places where I would normally be damaged for over 80%, I was only damaged 10%.
Actually, this might indeed be a problem.
The server can only calculate movement after getting the appropriate data from the client.
Now what happens is that the server gets movement data and calculates some sort of m/s from it to assess fall damage.
With normal ping, the client reports changes of position every, say, 0.5 seconds, the server then can calculate 2 GM per 0.5 s = dead. Now if the ping is high, the server won\'t get the resuslts in time. This means that it\'ll see only 2 GM per 2 sec, equalling to 0.5 GM per 0.5 sec, thus almost no damage.
I haven\'t checked this myself, but it sounds like what\'s being done. This includes the observation of laggy players who seem to move forward, then \"teleport\" backwards to a place only slightly away from the starting point.
From that, I conclude that the client sends the server \"moving direction speed\", and the server then moves the char until it gets an update from the client.
Normally, that update arrives in time, but not if the client is laggy.
Then we see: the client hasn\'t moved even close to what the server has assumed (the client has only managed to do some steps while the server\'s char has been running continously). The client finally reports the actual position and the server, correcting it\'s data, \"teleports\" the player backwards. Now the process starts over again.
If it really is done that way, there is the possibility of abuse: A user could artificially lag the client (by trapping / dropping packets to / from the server in a router) and thereby gain the ability of falling unlimited distances without getting damge.
If the server were to override the clientside position, this problem would go away, but it would add the problem of death due to lag, which cannot happen with the current system.