What makes up good netcode in a game?

[oLLie]

Can someone explain to me what some of the characteristics of good netcode are?
I know many people consider the Quake series of games to have excellent netcode.
I'm not sure, but I think people feel the same about the Unreal Tournament series.

I've played Quake III, and Unreal Tournament 2003, but for some reason I don't see what people consider good in their netcode.
I'm not saying their netcode is bad, because I don't really know what would make them good or bad. I do know that I prefer the "feel" when I play multiplayer Half-Life, or the multiplayer mods of Half-Life. The movement feels more "concrete" and I think this contributes to my feeling that the firing/shooting/projectile are more accurate. In Quake III and UT2K3, the movement feels more "fluid" and the shooting seems to lag. I don't seem to be hitting as often in these games as I do in HL and its mods. It could very well be that I just suck at these games, but I still wonder what good netcode is. Are these games considered to have better netcode because they are friendlier to players with high ping? Again, what are some characteristics of good netcode?

Thanks guys,
Ollie

 

[DaveSimmons]

#1 secure from client spoofing -- early games trusted clients to accurately client state (position, armor, damage, etc.) to the server, which allowed for hyper-fast movement, supercharged weapons, etc. Good netcode should keep all client state on the server, and only allow the client to report the equivalent of "pressed primary fire button." Sanity checks are also needed for mouselook, turns, etc. to make sure they are humanly possible.

But I do applicaion programming rather than game programming. You might want to be going places like gamasutra.com and sites it links to for people with do it for a living instead of just read about it

 

[oLLie]

Thanks for reminding me about Gamasutra, DaveSimmons!

 

[oLLie]

bump!