How hits register — Wiki

Your hits are decided on your screen, then the server checks them. Why a shot sometimes doesn't count.

Your hits are decided on your screen

When you fire, your own game traces the bullet, with your spread and recoil, against the players as you see them. If it hits someone, your game tells the server who it hit and where. The server doesn't fire your bullet again: it checks that the hit is believable, then applies the damage.

The server's checks

The server checks against where the players are on the server when your shot arrives:

  1. A clear line: nothing solid between your eyes and the point you hit. Another player in the way is fine; a wall isn't.

  2. Close to the player: either you can still see the part of them you hit, or the point is within about half a metre of where the server has them. That allowance grows with their speed, to over a metre along the way they're walking.

When a shot doesn't count

If a check fails, the shot simply doesn't count. You'll have seen blood, because your game shows it at once, but you get no hitmarker and they take no damage: the hitmarker only comes back from the server.

It mostly happens when an enemy reaches cover on the server just before your shot arrives, which is more likely on a high ping. There's no rewind: the server never moves players back to where you saw them.

The knife and the Trench Gun

  • The knife works the same way. Your game finds what you stab, up to 1.28 m in front of you standing (90 cm crouched, 60 cm prone). The server checks that you were close enough, with no wall between you.

  • The Trench Gun's pellets are checked one by one. Each stops at the first thing it touches, so the Trench Gun can't shoot through walls.

The servers

Every server runs at 64 ticks. It sends you each player's position about 40 times a second.