Rollback netcode in Rivals of Aether has been a long time coming, and it's proven to be quite the struggle to rebuild our original 1v1 netcode into something more modern. Today we are finally pleased to share that we have reached a point where we are ready to open our Rollback Netcode Beta to the public. Though this is only an open beta phase, it is the culmination of years of work from our team including YellowAfterlife, newcomer Yosi, and contributions from Zach Reedy and Juju.
If the phrase "rollback netcode" leaves you feeling a little lost, the short explanation is that this feature will massively improve online Rivals matches for laggy connections. Once rollback is fully polished up and on the live Steam branch, you can look forward to silky smooth matches with opponents far and wide. Check out this article on why it's a great system for online games, especially fighting games, if you'd like to get more into the nuts and bolts.
Please note that while this beta is functional, there are still some known quirks that we are working on internally related to one-sided rollback issues. We are also aware of a possible crash on match start, but are looking for more data to help debug this one. We expect to polish our rollback implementation over several months with the help of this beta.
Remember the more reports we get from players during this phase, the faster we can roll out fixes and get rollback into the live branch! With all that out of the way - here's how to get started:
How do I get it?
The Rollback Open Beta can only be accessed via Steam. First find Rivals of Aether in your Steam Library. From there:
- (1). Right click Rivals of Aether in your Steam library to bring up the options menu.
- (2). Select Properties. Once that opens, select the Betas Tab on the left of the properties window that opened up.
- (3). Open the Dropdown menu, scroll down, and select "rollback – Rollback Open Beta".
- (4). Once selected, you can close the menu.
- (5). After you select this branch, you should see that Rivals has an update queued. If you do not see that, then close Steam and reopen it until Rivals of Aether has an update. When you open the game, you will know you are on the right branch if you see the Rollback Netcode Open Beta Loading Screen.
Important: You can only queue against other players that are also using this branch of the game. You'll need to have no betas selected to find your opponents in official tournaments and events, which you can easily switch back to by following these instructions again and selecting "None" in the dropdown menu.
Improving the Beta
To get rollback netcode out of beta and into the Definitive Edition, we'll need your help! You can start by joining the Official Rivals of Aether Discord. Once you join, you’ll want to navigate to the #rollback-general channel. From there you can discuss the beta with other players, find players to play with and against, or submit bug/desync reports.
If you run into bugs or desyncs, you’ll want to navigate to the appropriate bug submission channel. There you can easily submit reports following the directions as pinned in the channel. This information is extremely valuable to our team and the more reports we get, the easier it is to find and fix issues. If you are participating in the open beta we highly encourage you to submit reports.
For desync issues that happen during testing we'll want some extra information that you can provide like this:
- (1). Open the Run app by typing "Run" in your Windows search bar.
- (2). Paste "%localappdata%/rivalsofaether/desyncs" into the search field and click "Ok".
- (3). Find the folder with the appropriate date and time for the desync you encountered. If you just desynced and went to report, it will be the most recent one! Organizing the view by "Date Modified" makes this easier.
- (4). Zip the folder by right clicking on it, selecting "Send to", and clicking "Compressed (zipped) folder". Leaving the name as the time stamp is fine.
- (5). Submit the folder. Give us everything from that time stamp and we can sort out the important information from there. Please have your opponent follow these same steps if possible. The more data we have, the better.
Future Features and Workshop
Right now, rollback is only confirmed for Steam and does not support Workshop characters or other modes outside of 1v1 online play. As we make progress in this open beta we’ll test it on other platforms to see if it’s feasible for consoles performance-wise.
We have no plans currently (or ability) to support Workshop due to how rollback needs a very controlled game state. For modes like teams, FFA, and spectating our goal is to eventually have those all working with rollback.