Evo 2024 is over, and while thousands of attendees came to play and watch their favorite fighting game, there were long lines forming just to try out one of the latest versions that hasn’t been released yet. Riot Games’ upcoming boxer 2XKO was unveiled to much fanfare at the show, bringing new information. But one aspect remains interesting and remains largely untouched: the technology behind the game and its importance.
Who better to talk about this than Tony Cannon? Tony created the GGPO rollback netcode back in 2009 and has been a prominent figure in the pursuit of better online fighting game play. These days, he serves as 2XKO’s technical lead, and was gracious enough to sit down for a 10-minute chat in the Evo showroom.
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First, the 2XKO team has been eager to share that server-based rollback would be a major component of 2XKO for some time. But what does this actually mean?
Tony Cannon: “The main benefit is that we’re a four-player game. When you have a two-player game running peer-to-peer, you just swap back and forth. If something goes wrong, it’s not a big deal – it’s just like a glitch, But if you have four people, now those errors have to be communicated to three other players, and the likelihood of something going wrong triples.
“If in a four-player game, one person quits, what happens to the other players? The game has to end, right? So if you put a server in the middle, then the amount of information you need to send is reduced. If three players Having a great time and having a stable connection while the fourth player stutters a bit or quits completely, you can actually do something about it.
“Especially in a two-man game. If at one point you’re assisting and your assist connection is a little shaky, that doesn’t necessarily affect the quality of the game, right? Because there’s not a lot invested in assisting. So when we When we have a server in the middle, we have more control.
VG247: It sounds expensive. Is this solution only possible through Riot’s existing server infrastructure?
Tony Cannon: “It’s certainly more expensive. But it’s something we have to do to maintain the quality of play we want online. We don’t want a four-player game that feels a little bit shabby. To us, it’s like, the whole Live services are provided together, right? That’s the thing about live services games, you know it’s free and how do you recoup those costs?
“It’s all about finding the balance, balancing it so that we get a net benefit and then be able to invest in the game, and servers are just one side of the cost equation.”
VG247: Earlier today, Tom (Cannon) was on stage talking about some of the benefits of server-based rollback, including anti-cheat solutions and disconnect detection. What other benefits are there?
Tony Cannon: “We consider servers to be the authority on prompt input. Which means, assuming you have the right combination? They have a lag button on their controllers. Even on Windows, if you’re in windowed mode, you can grab window and stop the game, so you temporarily don’t send input, thereby disrupting the network, causing you to abandon combos due to lag.
“But the server knows. It knows the game is supposed to be at frame 100, but it’s actually at frame 101 or 102. If it doesn’t have input, it can make an informed decision about what to do. It can do that because It was the authority of its time and more.
“If you think about a very sweaty environment, like a competitive match, you know maybe there’s a setting where the server can be very strict about how long it waits for input. But if you’re in a casual lobby, if it’s you and you’re in Discord Have some matches with friends in and maybe another more relaxed setting that will delay the game a little bit rather than having players quit because you have the server in the middle, which is exactly how we use it. OK, we need to put that in. The game is presented to players to see how they feel and what features they want, but there’s value in having that flexibility.
During a 2XKO livestream earlier in the day, Tom Cannon pointed out that good anti-cheat features are one of 2XKO’s strengths. This raises the question: will 2XKO use Vanguard (Riot’s own core-level anti-cheat software) or something else? Tony’s answers were clear and broad.
Tony Cannon: “Yes, we’re going to use Vanguard. A lot of the cheats we see in fighting games are about reading input, reading game state, or injecting input. They involve modifying the game binary in some way. Vanguard is really awesome Good at that, right?
VG247: There are a lot of concerns about kernel-level anti-cheat software like Vanguard, and many of them are concerned about their privacy. What do you have to say about these concerns?
Tony Cannon: “Yes, Vanguard runs in the core, right? But we don’t collect player information, read the title bar of the application… We don’t do anything that players would consider sensitive. We don’t collect player information.” It is very targeted to detect cheating and prevent people from tampering with 2XKO binaries.
“Companies installing kernel-level software have the potential to do these things, and we recognize that this is a problem. Valve has their anti-cheat program, and cheat programs have become so sophisticated now that they have to run in the kernel as well, right? So in order to protect everyone’s player experience, you have to work at the core level, so it’s like, you have to trust Riot at some point, but we’re definitely not interested in compromising players.
There’s a strong emphasis on fighting games’ offline communities, and while it’s safe to assume that 2XKO will allow for offline play, it’s not explicitly stated, nor does it touch upon the scope of offline mode. All of Riot’s other games have this requirement – who knew! Tony couldn’t confirm much, but he could flat out say that 2XKO will be playable offline.
Tony Cannon: “One of our principles is for us to embrace what the community does. At an event like this, you can’t possibly run a game that requires an online connection. The capital investment required, you need satellite trucks in parking lots, even then , it will collapse, right?
“So for running – knock on wood – a big event like 2XKO, we need to do the things that are required to run a successful event. I think that starts offline, which is one of the things we’re interested in doing is asking the smaller And what can we do with large organizers to make their lives easier, maybe a faster way for players to configure buttons.
“Two Evos ago, before we set up our booth, we had a closed meeting with the players and TOs to ask them what they wanted to do and what their thoughts were! We got a lot of ideas that we hadn’t thought of. So we never We will only make online games unless players ask us to do so.
Finally, I’d like to talk about Riot’s approach to working within the fighting game community (who knows, there might be another interview soon that goes into more depth on this). Riot has been around for a while, and historically the company has a lot of experience with the competitive scene in League of Legends and other games.
Tony founded Evo with his brother. When concerns arise online about Riot Games overly influencing the grassroots, a common counterargument is that it wouldn’t be something the fraternity would support. So I asked Tony about Riot’s intentions in this area.
Tony Cannon: “I think if you look at Riot’s approach, you’ll see, how can we become better as gamers. When League of Legends and the first World Championship came out, they looked at the competitive ecosystem The system, the idea was, people they were doing big events and we thought we could do better and then they came in and they did it.
“I think the fighting game community right now is the opposite. It’s built on the passion of players. People come to these events – whether it’s a big tournament or a small local event. That passion drives everything. How can you do that? ? Better than that? So we just want to expand and complement what Riot is doing in the competitive space and make that better – we’re focused on that.”
If you want to try the game for yourself, 2XKO will enter its first public alpha test this August, and you can sign up now.
