Adjusting ticrate for only 1 player?

[Baker]

Is it possible to mod the engine in a way that only adjusts the ticrate for 1 player?

A player who has to use dialup likes a higher ticrate, but everyone with broadband prefers a lower ticrate of course.

The ticrate is just the rate that the server thinks (and runs physics and so forth) and sends updates out, right?

Is this theoretically possible (like maybe a certain player with a certain QuakeC flag would only receive odd numbered updates) or is there a catch that would prevent this from working well (or at all)?

/Just asking in advance if I would run into something painful or insurmountable.

[FrikaC]

It's semi possible, the ticrate really describes the framerate the game runs at, since on each frame the server sends a bunch of data this greatly affects the network performance. So it's kinda fundamentally conflicted to having the game run at two different rates. However, it's not in conflict to do the network updates at two different rates. I hope this helps with your question.

[Urre]

Afaik this is pretty much what DP and many modern engines do, called rate limiting. You change your rate settings in the menu, and that variable controls the amount of network updates independent of the server framerate (aka ticrate in quake).