Ive been playing some Alpha 8 recently, and have been using the pulse rifle (and that gorgeous new model that it is) and Im feeling that there is a minor problem. Not seeing the bullets (lasers, plasma bullets?) is creating a bit of a problem for me.
For guns like the Rifle and the Lasgun not seeing the bullets is ok since the travel time is very small, so you only need to lead what ever you're shooting a bit, but something like the pulse rifle where the bullets are very slow (if an actual bullet IRL was this slow Im sure you could see it) it's hard to tell where to aim.
It could just be me, or a break in the game, or idk, perhaps some looking into?
Sounds like you've recently joined a high ping server. It's probably a problem with cg_projectilenudge which causes the bullet to spawn late [it always had anyway] and makes it in some cases, appears on the wall then hovers, and then expodes/disappears. Usually in the human atcs base, if i stand on the rc and shoot towards the other corner of the room with pulse rifle, the bullet simply appears on the wall and waits 0.4 seconds then dissappears with a sizzle effect.
Australians have to deal with this pretty much everyday on tremulous gpp due to the lack of servers close by [well, honestly i don't know any australian gpp players on this forum though] and it's quite annoying when its hard to predict the bullet path in some cases when in close range combat.
Anyway the solution to this is to: a) Join a lower ping server b) Set cg_projectilenudge 0, but you have to aim ahead by an extra distance dependant upon your ping. This is normal for 1.1 players.
For guns like the Rifle and the Lasgun not seeing the bullets is ok since the travel time is very small, so you only need to lead what ever you're shooting a bit
Not really related to your problem but I think that rifle and lasgun don't have bullets but deal instant damage to the target (also mass driver, shotgun and chaingun). So if you need to aim ahead that means that the server you are playing on has the unlagged feature off and the "travel time" of the hyptothetical bullet is really a ping issue (imagine your rifle bullet is a UDP datagram that travels with roughly 2/3 the speed of light around the globe, making a few stops at routers). The unlagged feature (official servers have it) makes it unnecessary to aim ahead but it can happen that you get shot while you are behind a wall (because the moment your enemy shoots you there was a clear line of sight but it takes some time before the server tells you that you were hit).
Not really related to your problem but I think that rifle and lasgun don't have bullets but deal instant damage to the target (also mass driver, shotgun and chaingun). So if you need to aim ahead that means that the server you are playing on has the unlagged feature off and the "travel time" of the hyptothetical bullet is really a ping issue (imagine your rifle bullet is a UDP datagram that travels with roughly 2/3 the speed of light around the globe, making a few stops at routers). The unlagged feature (official servers have it) makes it unnecessary to aim ahead but it can happen that you get shot while you are behind a wall (because the moment your enemy shoots you there was a clear line of sight but it takes some time before the server tells you that you were hit).
I was under the impression the rifle has a travel time. A delay of when you shoot and when the bullet actually hits. So with taht impression it waht perfectly relevant. My point was, if this may be true for rifles, they it's not too important to see the bullet in the air to aim because of how little the delay is, whereas the pulse rifle has a very slow travel time making it near impossible to know where to aim.
But I think it is about ping, thank you for clearing that up.
Rifle, shotgun, lasgun and all those are hitscan weapons, meaning damage is calculated on the basis of the position of the crosshair relative to the target's hitbox, instead of an object travelling in the game, such as pulse rifle or lucifer cannon shots. If there's a delay in your hitscan weapon, it's your ping. So if you play with a high ping, it will seem as though the 'bullets' have a travel time, while you're actually basically seeing your ping, which can actually be quite useful if you want to get an impression of how it will affect your gameplay.
