Is there anything that can be done about the ridiculous hitboxes/reg? So many times I have run round a corner, and a heavy or other class has shot and killed me - which should not have been possible. I have shot and killed people with the scatter gun when I have not had my crosshair anywhere near them.
Everything is perfectly valid - it just does not seem so to you
Okay, heres the basic networking crashcourse:
Theres the Specialattack SERVER with the players on it, theyre the CLIENTS. Whenever you do something in the game (running, shooting etc), you send data packets to the server which constantly updates the current situations. If you shoot, the packet it sent to the server that now calculates if there was an enemy at the place you shot at. If there was, the server sends damage to that player.
Now people dont have perfect internet connections and packets will be lost occasionally. The solution for this is interpolation. If there are packets missing, the server will go back in time and calculate how the outcome will be most likely. The main cvar of interpolation is "cl_interp". It determines how much time the server goes back in time to interpolate for missing packets (in seconds, eg. cl_interp 0.06 means the server goes back 60ms in time - default is 0.1). The higher this value is, the more accurate the interpolation is (because the server gets more packets to calculate with). So generally its good to have a high cl_interp.
However, what happens too if you have a high interp? The server needs more time to calculate (because he needs longer to start) - hence he also needs longer to show you whether you've hit or not (or if YOU have been hit or not).
Think of it like this: You're standing in front of an opponent and next to a wall, and he shoots at you while youre about to run behind the wall. If the enemy has a high interp, like the default 0.1, it takes the server 100ms to go back in time and start calculating, while he still shows you running behind the wall. If the result of the servers calculation now is that you've been hit and you're dead, you'll drop dead when you're behind the wall, however you were in a perfectly valid position when the enemy shot at you. Same when you shoot someone - you've hit him, but he drops 100ms later, which is why the shots look off.
A rule thumb is that if your internet connection is very good, a low interp is reasonable. You can go on a server and type "net_graph 3" in console and see what your choke is (choke = the amount of packets sent from the server to you server that are being lost). If your choke is high, you should use a higher interp or a lower cl_updaterate. Constant choke of 0-3 is not an issue and you an use a low interp and high updaterate.
Another rule of thumb is to set interp to 2 / your cl_updaterate (eg your cl_updaterate is 50 (you request 50 data packets per second), so your interp could be 2/50 = 0.04). YOu can vary this though, it doesnt hurt of you have a higher one - for example I use updaterate 66 (the maximum for TF2) and a cl_interp of 0.05 since my internet connection is not the best
More info to the whole issue:
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki ... Networking
It's not very easy to understand, but once you got it, everything makes sense
