mouse targeting lag

I can't remember when I first saw this or if it was always there and I just don't remember noticing it.


Apparently, City of Heroes has mouse targeting lag, as if the game was designed as a first-person shooter. This causes targeting in this game to be rather far off and behave completely incorrectly, which is problematic for this type of game with target lock combat.


Steps to reproduce:

1) Pick an NPC, ally or enemy so long as it shows a target box on mouse-over or some other indicator that says "NPC is targeted", and line it up well ahead of you and slightly off towards the side of your screen(not directly in front of your character's head).

2) Start moving forward, especially with sprint, and try to keep your cursor on that target while continually moving forward through the next steps.

3) Notice how the target is not "targeted"(no indication of the cursor being on them) despite your cursor being on them.

4) Move your cursor farther toward whichever section of the side of your monitor that lines up with the target and the center of your screen. Notice that your cursor will now target the NPC, if placed correctly, though the cursor is most definitely not ON the target.


It's as if we are "leading the target" like an FPS game, but that shouldn't happen in this game.




This causes me to be concerned about how this relates to network lag, whether it is affected by or causes more network lag.

1) It could be affected by network lag, meaning you would need to "lead the target" much farther to actually target them.

2) This makes me think that the game is not only tracking and confirming player/NPC positions and movements but also tracking the camera and mouse pointer position and movement as if it were an NPC that was following the player.
This would definitely cause more network lag because it would require communication with the server to make sure the mouse pointer was where it was supposed to be.

3) This could cause graphical lag as well due to the game rendering things farther behind the character than are actually visible on screen, which explains the issue of having trouble selecting forward targets because of some apparently invisible surface between the camera and the target.


This is a very odd issue.
Anybody else notice this?





Edit:
To put it more simply....

Just try to keep the "target box" visible on any target, while you are moving forward, that isn't directly in the center of the screen.

Oddd, it seems to not behave this way inside instances. At least, I just noticed there is no apparent targeting lag while in one instance.

Why would the way the way mouse targeting works be different in the shared public zones and work correctly in instances?



Edit:
After further testing, it seems the issue is no longer present anywhere or on any character it used to be an issue with.

It's really odd that I have seen this often before and yet once I finally pay attention enough to report it then it somehow corrects itself.

Did CoH recently gain the ability to stealth patch easy fixes on the fly? Did the developers fix this that quickly after seeing my bug report and/or this thread?
I know I'm not going crazy, but I don't know what happened.

I'm pretty sure that the targeting code is implemented clientside - you can still target mobs following a mapserver that doesn't recover in particular if you pill your network cable so you cannot possibly have a connection to the game servers you still are able to select mobs with either the mouse or tab.
As such network lag shouldn't affect this.
It is possible that the targeting boxes are generated based on one of their vertices as opposed to their centre or that they are otherwise offset from the object's location. There have definitely been cases in the past where objects cannot be targeted despite you standing on them and character position reflecting the object being present - I'm thinking of crates needing to be destroyed in particular here.
Any of these you need to identify the map and object as the bug will be specific to both.
The other possibility which wouldn't be a bug per se is that you are in a target rich environment and have overlapping targeting boxes - in which case clicking will target the foremost object. - It may even be something in front of your character but behind the camera position. - Try switching between first and third person view to check that.

The big difference in zones is that you have near and far objects and when something is borderline it may or may not be visible and target-able.

Quote:

Originally Posted by T_Immortalus Did CoH recently gain the ability to stealth patch easy fixes on the fly? Did the developers fix this that quickly after seeing my bug report and/or this thread? I know I'm not going crazy, but I don't know what happened.

always been possible if the change is purely serverside

There is no mouse targeting lag.

I know what I saw.

I had to "lead targets" as if this game was a FPS aiming game. I don't know why, but it did happen.
It may be a bug that disappears periodically or is affected by something that happens periodically, but it definitely happened.

Don't say "it never happened" or "you're mistaken" when you were not playing my character at that exact moment.

This is happening again on my new level 15 rad/time corruptor in Praetoria on the mission "Arrest Resistance in Holon Technologies" from Investigator Whitworth.

I'm not having any lag and everything is working perfectly, so I have no idea why this is happening.
I have tried unloadgfx and sync to fix it, but it is still happening. I even reset my internet adapter to reset my internet connection, but it still is behaving this way.


The only things each character I noticed this on had in common were the facts that they were in Praetoria or Praetorian missions and happened to have Time Manipulation as a secondary, and they are male. The current character has xp gain disabled as well, but I doubt that has anything to do with it as enabling it doesn't change it.

This is very very odd. I filed a bug report also.






Edit, further testing:
It seems that running(no movement power necessary, not even sprint) forward means I have to move my cursor towards the edge of my screen to target something on that side of my screen and moving backward requires moving my cursor towards the center of the screen to target.
It also does not matter if I am actually moving. I can jam myself against a wall holding the command for backwards, to where I can't move even an inch, and it will still behave this way.

It behaves the same way in first person view as 3rd person.


Edit 2:
It also works with Walk. Speed of movement does not affect the distance the cursor must be offset to target, apparently.

Anybody have any ideas on what I can do to catch this error in the act such that there will be a record of what causes this error?



Edit:
Interesting. It seems if I hit "auto-run", and turn my view around to look directly behind my character, the error does not happen. It still happens when I put my view back around forward after, though.


Edit 2:
It seems "auto-run" completely fixes the error so long as it stays on. Manual running causes the issue.
It seems that there is some problem with mouse cursor position tracking while manually moving my character, when this bug occurs, such that "auto-run" is the only option for accurate mouse cursor position tracking.


Edit 3:
This still happens after leaving the mission I first noticed it in, but it could have been affecting me since logging in without me noticing due to the fact that I use tab targeting most of the time and don't move as much in combat situations.

Also, why am I stuck as VIP here on the forums? I doubt what causes that is linked tot he bug, but it is odd that every post in this thread, while the bug was occurring, happens to have me listed as VIP.
(Edit: Ok, now they all switched back to freebie. Strange.)

*shakes head* I keep reading and all that comes to mind anymore T is that you need to share whatever you're trippin' on when you're playing. :-p

Are you running the game full screen or windowed?
If windowed can you reproduce it when full screen and is your game resolution the same as your desktop resolution?

I'm wondering if there may be some confusion between where your mouse driver thinks the screen boundaries are and where your grahics driver thinks.

If its a problem in the game code I'd expect to see others finding this as well.
I doubt its the graphics drivers for much the same reason.
I'm not going to completely rule either out though.
Are you using the default Microsoft drivers for your mouse or some that came with the mouse?

You know the drill for system details.

T,

Any chance you can load up something like FRAPS and put together a video of the behavior you're seeing?

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

Anisotropic Filtering: 16x

Isn't this setting a little high?

I can understand the edges of the targetting box being closer to the edge of the screen as you get nearer the target - think of your view as a cone with the apex at your character - the edges of that map to the edges of your screen - hence objects appear larger when closer.

This doesn't explain why you cannot click within the targetting box but only on its boundary unless there is some other object closer whose targetting box is obscuring the box for your intended target.

A thought though - do you use any targetting bots/macros in other games or is there anything similar built into the Razer mouse's software?
I believe some of their range will allow you to set up multiple gaming profiles and it might be that you have one set up which is optimised for certain FPSs

Ah that's a *lot* further off than I was envisioning.
Its a long time since I used a logitech mouse and I did find the driver clashed with my sound card giving regular sound loops leading to mapservers but certainly nothing like the problem you are describing.

A quick check on Google shows a number of problems with Logitech's drivers dates ranging from 2003 up to late last year - especially Mouseware in conjunction with OpenGL applications

It may be worth trying updating the mouse drivers or even removing them and letting Windows use the default driver. I'd also try switching it to a different USB port if its a USB mouse.
I presume you aren't seeing any similar problems outside the game.

The bug happened again, but I still couldn't see a pattern.
I don't know what to do.

The bug happened again just a little bit ago and is still going on.
It's really odd.

The only other thing that behaves even remotely like this are tool-tips when they show so long as you aren't moving and disappear while moving, though badge tool-tips flicker on and off instead of disappearing the entire time you move.
I have no idea if they are linked, or why they would be.



Edit:
Here is some interesting behavior.
It behaves this way even during the "rooted" portion of powers, when you can't move.

It seems that just giving the game a command for movement, whether you move or not, causes it.
That would mean it isn't an issue of "the cursor point of view location can't keep up with the player camera point of view" and more of a "cursor POV moves off location on movement command" issue.


Edit 2:
It seems tool-tips and the cursor position bug are related at least slightly.
When I had the bug(my computer just crashed on me after I disabled to "razerhid" process to test), the tool-tips for inspirations and powers in my tray would disappear for the entire time I was moving, but now that I do not have the bug the cursor is back to working properly and the tool-tips flicker just like the bad list tool-tips do.

I still have no clue why.





There is one pattern. The bug seems to start with a random zone load, and the bug seems to persist, through switching characters or reloading the game(at least within a short time), until another zone load some time after.