Yes, I did just say that, because the difference between 50 and 100ms in latency is not an issue for an RTS. Considering Starcraft could be played perfectly on a 250ms+ dialup connection, it's really not a problem.

I've had Age of Empires 2 start lagging with 8+ players on a WRT54G router before.

AOE lags no matter what you do.

Not if you wanted to play at all competitively, or...no, it couldn't be. I tried. Without a solid sub-100 ping the game could barely be played at all.

Sorry, not to mention warcraft 3 was even more latency dependent (could tell the difference between 50 and 75ms latency).

Actually. Starcraft is easier with lag, because it gives you more time to issue orders.

Once again we go into how you don't know how to play. I played competitively for almost a year on dialup and was rather successful. The whole game has significant command lag, the game does not require any split second actions, even micromanaging. If the lag bothered you at /all/ you weren't playing right. Most games were won before either player even engaged.

Hahahaha, wow, you telling me I don't know how to play starcraft. Sorry but I also played competitively--tried on dial up and failed miserably because it's damn near impossible. At the higher echelons of competitive play you have extreme micro--if you want to execute the 7 minute tank drop with any precision and want to keep your tanks it requires an insane amount of micro, if you want to pull off dragoon micro against zerglings, or do medic micro, or any kind of micro at all, dial up is impossible. Starcraft DID require plenty of micro, unless you were at the middle-lower echelons of competitive play. When you're facing koreans (let's face it, they were the best at the game) or just other competitive players (faced Random once about a year before he got taken off the #1 in the ladder list and everyone started botting their accounts) you have to be able to micro.

I'm sorry matty but you're wrong, ask anyone who has done Starcraft/Warcraft 3 competitively and they'll tell you the exact same thing. 100%, in every way, completely and totally wrong.

You really have no idea how the game's netcode works at all, do you?

If SC only works well with sub 100 pings, then what the hell did people do at release?

LAN, jeez have you even been reading this thread

Have you? Obviously they used battle.net and tcp/ip too.

Oh, so you're privy to the netcode in starcraft? Post some pieces of it and feel free to explain what each function does then.

I know how the game responds at different ping levels--I'm not intimately familiar with the netcode itself or its exact workings, but I know it well enough. For your casual 5v3 comp stomps or playful 2v2 non-competitive matches and such yeah, dial up isn't so bad, but if you're trying to win, playing against decent people or are trying to fight someone a few thousand miles away (koreans, especially, come to mind) dial up is bollocks.


The same thing people did at the Quake 3 and UT releases--they tolerated the ****tiness. Sure, Q3 is playable with dial up, as is UT, but you're going to be at a severe disadvantage to anyone with deent internet.

Pieces? Functions?

Awful, awful comparison. Q3 and UT (and everything newer) rely upon complex prediction algorithms to keep the game playable at the expense of client-side accuracy. The artifacts of lag are not as immediately apparent even though they have a far greater impact on actual gameplay than in Starcraft.

Starcraft uses a lock-step pattern instead, which yields more apparent lag artifacts (global slowdown). The advantages are implementation ease, synchronization accuracy and the elimination of strategic advantages from latency. In spite of your protests (and demand for specific implementation details that you'd need us to interpret for you anyway), JM's correct.

DJ-Yoshi - I think what people are trying to say is that the game came out in 1996.

Widespan broadband adoption didn't start to occur into 2001, 2002 - more than five years later.

People played just fine on Dialup for quite some time..

This is the lock-step method, as implemented by AOE. StarCraft works exactly the same way.

IIRC there's an article in one of the Game Programming Gems, which goes into such details as how StarCraft makes the player feel like it's responsive, even though your units don't move as soon as you order them.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3094/1500_archers_on_a_288_network_.php

As mentioned by both Jon`C and JM, the network code in Starcraft renders lag irrelevant. Your commands are still going to occur in the correct order, which is all that matters here. Not only is the micromanaging nowhere near as time-sensitive as you make it out to be (you know how fast the other side is going to do damage, you know when the units need to move), but there's a lot more to the game than even micromanaging. There's build orders, and resource management. This stuff is not down to the millisecond. Not to mention, because of said network code, the other side will have no advantage over you for having a vastly better connection.

If you're using dialup as an excuse for sucking at Starcraft, that's just sad.

Actually it came out in 1998, not 96.

I'm just surprised you guys honestly think dial up is irrelevant in starcraft. It's obvious none of you ever played seriously against someone with broadband from a dial up connection, otherwise you wouldn't be saying that.

But I don't care enough to argue anymore.

Don't give up, that just invalidates your entire arguement.

I wish it would invalidate your posting.

Oh sure it makes a difference. If someone is on dialup it's less likely that they'll miss their turn.

Apparently you don't understand the concept of lock-step whatsoever.

I have. They ***** about lag, quit, and I win.