Does running Dark Souls at higher frame rate cut down reaction time window?
A comment on Steam:
[...] parry windows and invisibility frames are tied to the frame rate. Sword & board 60fps is doable, but with a more fragile character that relies on rolling and parrying it's a mess.
From this answer:
[...] the active frame window for parrying (one of the most advanced combat maneuvers) is from 6 to 8 frames, I assume it is the same for kicking.
That being said, the game runs at ~30 fps giving you a whole 1/5 of a second to input the commands together.
Logically, at 60fps the time frame window of 6-8 frames would be 1/10-1/8 seconds, if indeed tied to fps.
In answer to your question, I believe it does. invulnerability frames, as they are called, occur when you are rolling or dodging. It means if you get struck during these frames, you will not take damage. The amount of frames can vary.
For example, I don't know if this is the correct amount but say a medium roll is 50 frames long. For the first 10 of these frames, you can still take damage. For the next 30, you are invulnerable to damage. For the final 10, you can take damage again.
Now if you're running the game at 30fps , Those 'iframes' (as they are confusingly referred to!) last for one second. As far as I've been able to tell from playing the game on across console, PC, and PC with DSFix, playing it in 60fps reduces the perceived duration of the iframes. It's the same amount of frames, but they're over a lot quicker due to the higher framerate.
As far as I can tell, anyway. Dark Souls' mechanics are cryptic even when you're not meddling with mods!
While Dark Souls iFrames (i stands for invincibility) are related to frames, DSFix's 60 Fps-Unlock is compensating this with doubling your iFrames (So on fast-roll you have 24 Frames invincibility instead of tge regular 12).
There is a reddit thread already discussing this.
After playing several hundred hours of Dark Souls, I learned to value every one iFrame, and I am able to confirm that there is no anti-proportional loss in invincibility with 60 FPS enabled. However, you should consider that some attributes of your roll are changed, e.g. the covered ground. Also consider deactivating 60 FPS for some bosses (Arty in particular), because (I feel like) some tracking of attacks and their lingering effects are improved!