Reddit user Altimor decided to stop waiting for Capcom to fix the game’s broken netcode. Instead, this user decided to fix it without the company’s help, and apparently, the whole process only took two days. The fix only works on PC for the moment but fans are reporting drastic improvements to the game through this fix.
There is a major issue with a player’s game lagging behind another when competing on online matches. This can cause artificial lag and a one-sided rollback onto one of the competing players. You can visibly see the effect that this broken aspect has on online competitive and casual play.
Altimor explains that “When the players’ “clocks” are synced, if there is e.g. a 4 frame packet round trip time between them, each player should be 2 frames ahead of the time of the last received input from their opponent, and experience 2 frame rollbacks.” These frame rollbacks can really affect the level of skill shown in an online match. It is hard to respond when you are back in time in an online match.
“If one player lags behind, the other player will receive inputs from farther “in the past” (up to 15 frames!) than they should, causing unnecessarily big rollbacks and artificial lag, while the player that’s behind may even be receiving inputs that appear to be “in the future” to their game and never experience rollbacks at all,” Altimor continues.
In short, this fix will make sure that your game clock never gets more than half of your packet in the round trip time ahead of your opponent. You will no longer have to experience more rollback than them resulting in a balanced and relatively lag-free situation.
This fix does only apply to PC versions of the game, working as a sort of “self patch” for many players. The only way the fix can reach the PlayStation 4 version of the game is Capcom is to implement it themselves. Till then, the community will remain split between the lag-free PC version and the standard PlayStation 4 release.
Reminder, Street Fighter V: Champion Edition is headed for both PC and PlayStation 4 on February 14, 2020. The game will include additional characters and more content for players to explore and enjoy then the standard version.
This might be a good chance for Capcom to quietly steal this netcode fix and implement it into the core games. If a fan can fix the game, then there is no reason that Capcom can not improve the online lag situation.
