I use WASD to control my character, and it seems like there is a delay when I try to turn. My character also turns in choppy motions. Is this just me or does everyone that uses WASD do this? And if it's not just me, are there any plans to make the controls smoother?

WSAD actually controls the camera, which moves smoothly. Your character turns to face with the camera, that's where the delay is.

I've frequently noticed a delay using click-to-move as well. I always attributed it to lag.

Ahh, this is an age-old question. Why is there lag in the moving of your character? Here's my best shot at an answer for you:

Dungeon Runners has a long history. It's been through several incarnations before it became what you see before you today. Consequently, it's been through several development teams as well. This team has only been working on the game for about a year.

Dungeon Runners used to be called Exarch. And Exarch was an RTS game. As such, the core of the engine is based on the idea of a synchronized simulation. This is very different from standard MMO design. In most MMOs, your character can move immediately and you see predicted versions of other monsters and people in the world. In a synchronized simulation, nothing happens until the server says it's okay. So, when you click, the message to click goes up to the server and has to be reflected back to you (and everyone else nearby) before any movement can take place.

The upside of this approach is that we can support tons and tons of monsters with very low bandwidth requirements. The downside is that there is a perceptible delay between doing an action and having it take place. This is pretty easy to deal with as long as the delay is predictable.

We've done some experimentation with supporting instant client-side movement. Our results are promising, but making this kind of change would require a lot of development time. That's why we haven't done it yet. It is on the list, however...

I hope that makes some sense.

steve

Pfft... I want instant gratification for my lack of paying, Stephen and I want it NOW!

Ahh... that makes perfect sense. Thanks a ton for the explanation. I'm glad it's at least "on the list".

Thanks againa for all you folks do.

*blank stare*

Well, at least that means it's not my laptop, I think.