Various, likely related Client Synch issues

[ArkTolei]

Clients seem to have issues if they get too far from either the host, or from the origin point of bases.

 

First issue is very clear and easy to identify.  If you build a base large enough, eventually clients will become unable to add to the base, as it will say that it's "unsupported".  I haven't successfully added support structures that would allow the client to continue building past that point, but the host can continue building as normal (and clients can add resources to a build the host starts fine).  I believe I have managed to successfully add support structures to later parts of the build, but it doesn't reset the distance for this.  

Related to the above, if the host continues building outward, eventually a false portal is created to a seemingly random part of the map (first time it was underwater, second time it was underground) and the clients will see the new construction as being in a completely different part of the map.  They "warp" to the new location if they step off the ledge of old construction, into where the new construction is (that they cannot see, but which is still clearly visible to those host.

The above bug results in the clients seeing underwater construction and other similar oddities, while on the host everything stays completely normal.  Importantly, it is consistent between multiple clients.  They all teleport to the same fake location (both in appearance and on their map), they can see each other, and the host if the host is in the new construction, but they are still standing on the base on the hosts end, and

if the clients fall or jump off the base they will instantly see themselves where they actually are.

On the second test, the fake teleport bug seemed to be fixed when all players left the section of the map that the new construction was in and then came back.  I don't know if this was attempted on the first instance.  I believe the fake teleport didn't take place after reloading the save, however.  I believe the "unsupported" bug stayed throughout all iterations.

These bugs are relatively niche, but pretty major issues when they crop up.

We also noticed that there seems to be an issue where crow feathers might not spawn far away from the host.  Other players could wander for long periods without seeing one, only to have them appear suddenly when the host came over to the same area.

There are some general sync issues with the specific locations of objects in the world that are generally not that impactful, but occasionally are very destructive.  Bombardier beetle animations in particular are completely broken on all clients I've seen.  The pools do not appear where they should, and the projectile animation is similarly broken.  You can estimate where the attack went based off the beetles body, but even that isn't perfect, because creature sync is better than projectile, but still imperfect.  This is not a ping issue.  It happens roughly similarly with 10 MS same house ping, and 200 MS across the pacific ocean ping.  I think the clients are individually controlling animations, but are not individually controlling hit detection, and they are consistently drawing those animations differently than the host (bombardier projectiles never draw correctly on clients).

This bug also results in things like clients being unable to pick up items off the ground (they're a few feet away from the client), fake webs visually entangling clients (that they can walk out of at full speed because there isn't an actual web there), and on rare occasion, enemies hitting clients in ways that are visually impossible (bypassing block due to actually being in a slightly different location than they seem, resulting in an attack from behind, or otherwise getting a hit that is inconsistent with the normal hit detection i.e. hitting out of range, or someone behind them with a frontal attack).

For all of those client bugs, the host can see exactly what happened, but generally nobody else can see it.

Many of these bugs are likely tied to specific ways clients are programmed, and the way they play out make me suspect that many of them are all fundamentally tied to a couple of core issues that have a lot of small consequences.