Add Networking tab back to the options menu (in a secret way)

[Roudenn]

About the PR

Networking settings tab had returned. It is hidden by default, but you can unlock it by typing advancedsettings in the console.

Networking settings can configure diffirent important client-side values related to PVS and control prediction. If you actually know what each setting means, you can slightly improve your performance by changing these values.

Developers can conveniently press buttons and change sliders to test predicted interactions.

Why / Balance

Basically it's a convenience change for developers or advanced players with weak computers. Just type one command and you can easily change these values withoud needing to change them manually or configuring .toml files.

As I was told, originally it got removed because of people messing these settings and then constantly complaining about unexpected lags or bugs. This was fixed via adding a requirement to unlock this tab - typing advancedsettings command in the console.

And to prevent people from accidentaly breaking things again, there's a permament warning in yellow text that this thing gonna kill your game if you don't know how to drive.

Technical details

Original networking UI was rewritten into new settings tabs format and reimplemented into the game

Media

Breaking Changes

probably none and it's almost a secret change

Requirements

• I have read and am following the Pull Request and Changelog Guidelines.
• I have added media to this PR or it does not require an ingame showcase.

Changelog
no

[slarticodefast]

Yeah... I don't know about this one.
I fully expect a lot of players to adjust these values because some guide told them to without knowing what they are doing.
And then stuff breaks for them, they may not know that these settings caused it and others won't be able to reproduce it because they have different settings.
And if there are better settings for performance (without degrading PVS popin etc) that should just be the default for everyone.

[Killerqu00]

Yeah... I don't know about this one. I fully expect a lot of players to adjust these values because some guide told them to without knowing what they are doing. And then stuff breaks for them, they may not know that these settings caused it and others won't be able to reproduce it because they have different settings. And if there are better settings for performance (without degrading PVS popin etc) that should just be the default for everyone.

A solution to this is to make this a server-side CVar and enable this in development.toml

[Simyon264]

While the values can totally break your game, locking it behind a command seems fine, given that users wishing to change these values already could via just setting the cvar in the client config file.

[Roudenn]

Yeah... I don't know about this one. I fully expect a lot of players to adjust these values because some guide told them to without knowing what they are doing. And then stuff breaks for them, they may not know that these settings caused it and others won't be able to reproduce it because they have different settings. And if there are better settings for performance (without degrading PVS popin etc) that should just be the default for everyone.

If they mindlessly change sliders in Networking tab because someone else told them to ignoring big yellow text, and then wonder why some things are broken, then it's 100% their fault

[lzk228]

no cl?

[Roudenn]

no cl?

This is almost a secret change that new players should not know about, otherwise there will be a lot more people that can't read and break their game

[github-actions]

This pull request has conflicts, please resolve those before we can evaluate the pull request.

[deltanedas]

click lizard plushie 7 times

[Roudenn]

Yeah... I don't know about this one. I fully expect a lot of players to adjust these values because some guide told them to without knowing what they are doing. And then stuff breaks for them, they may not know that these settings caused it and others won't be able to reproduce it because they have different settings. And if there are better settings for performance (without degrading PVS popin etc) that should just be the default for everyone.

A solution to this is to make this a server-side CVar and enable this in development.toml

The problem with that is, other servers can just enable this tab in their Release build. And since client CVars transfer between servers, they can join one server with Networking tab enabled, then do their setting wrong, then join another server with this feature disabled and then they will be stuck with broken game, unable to fix it in any way.

And some servers also still have Networking tab in settings, so this can already happen.

I think enabling it everywhere, but as a half-secret will solve this, since when someone will complain with lag you can just tell them to type advancedsettings command and reset all networking settings. Or reducing amount of prediction ticks for example can help you boost your FPS by sacrificing some stability.

And yet i think that Networking sliders (not talking about Enable Prediction checkbox) can't actually completely break your game, they can just worsen the experience if they end up in wrong hands.

[ElectroJr]

I think its fine to reintroduce the tab with the warning & locking it behind advanced options. But given that this is effectively a partial revert of #28231, it'd be good to check with @PJB3005 & @VasilisThePikachu. Though if I understood the comment correctly PJB already implied that locking it behind something like the advanced options cvar would be fine.

And regarding some of the comments in the removal PR like this one

I really don't see a reason for players to touch this in the first place. Those who do can just edit their cvar config file.

While uninformed players editing the values could cause issues, part of why I wanted to add the tab in the first place was specifically to make the cvars more easily discoverable for players who actually are having networking issues and want to try fix them. I think expecting players to look at the source code or browse through console command completion suggestions to figure out what options they can configure is unreasonable. I think a warning message should be sufficient and even think that enabling advanced options should itself be an option that is discoverable via the options menu.

I'm also generally concerned about ensuring that the networking options are discoverable because all the default values are quite arbitrary. They're more or less chosen so that playing with the dev environment's default fake lag feels fine, which probably isn't at all representative of the real networking situations that different players have to deal with. And things like the PVS budget options are also arbitrarily chosen to try avoid stuttering, but its its more or less just set to a number that happens to feels fine on my own computer.

[github-actions]

This pull request has conflicts, please resolve those before we can evaluate the pull request.