slashdotted...

So my last post got slashdotted. Crazy. And here I thought no one was really listening. Anyway, a few clarifications:

1. I have the original arcade machine about 5 feet away from my XBox360, so those claiming it's a perfect port are clearly mistaken. There is a significant speed increase between the two, and the AI is completely re-written.

2. The actual speed increases I posted were not from any kind of measurements taken. I don't have any factual data on exactly how much each version was sped up, but the point was not the increase, but the fact that increasing the game speed further effectively makes the lag worse.

3. Anyone claiming they played lag free obviously does not understand the finer points of SF2. I'm sorry if you take that as an offense, but it's true. When playing at a pro level, you'd notice a single frames worth of lag; because you operate at the frame level of timings; and I don't know of anyone with a sustained 16ms ping time.

4. I tried to stay away from the controller and connection issues in my writeup, since both can potentially be fixed. Adding an emulation speed option would help reduce the inherent lag, but will never remove it completely.

I think it's time I wrote up some info on combating lag with both game design and programing techniques. I had originally wanted to do this as a GDC session, but didn't get the spot last year and I've been procrastinating ever since.