While I was fiddling with multiplayer for VCs 4 I was starting to believe that multiplayer with more than two players wouldn't be as difficult as Joseph thought before. It would be still much work, but not impossible at all. I don't know if it's worth implementing because I don't know how many people would really use it, so I started this poll to get some info.
Before voting, consider the following things:
- It will be Windows only. DirectPlay allows some features that makes it easier, and I don't want to reproduce these functions under plain DOS.
- The bandwith needed will increase with every new player. With two players, two machines need to send packets to the other, this means 2*1=2 packets at a time. Three machines would send packets to the other two, this is 3*2=6 packets at a time, 4 machines send 4*3=12 packets at a time etc. up to 8*7=56 packets with 8 human players. I don't know how many bytes is that, but it may require fast LAN with many players.
- If any TTD freezes or disconnects, every other machine will freeze (or fall back to single player if you've enabled it). Desynchronizations will be harder to solve, either (you'll have to copy one savegame to all the others and use sv2flip on them. The current version can't do that of course, but I'll update it if I finish this feature)
Now that you've read this, please vote. If there are enough people interested, I'll really start working on this.
Last edited by Csaboka on 08 Aug 2005 13:38, edited 1 time in total.
First I want all other stuff working in multiplayer safe without desync,
then I couldn't play it with more than two people and it would make multiplayer aware patches even more complicate :/
Maybe I have time to test TTD Multiplayer in a few seconds...
-edit-
And I think the impossible screen res change I would like more
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eis_os wrote:First I want all other stuff working in multiplayer safe without desync,
then I couldn't play it with more than two people and it would make multiplayer aware patches even more complicate :/ ...
I second this oppinion. No sense making an unstable 2+ player multiplayer if we always get desynch problems.
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marcin wrote:For those who aren't afraid of the alpha versions, there's 2.0.1 alpha 9.1 MG, with a long-awaited feature: Ctrl key working in the multiplayer mode. For now, the following Ctrl-key patches work in multiplayer:
- signal type selection (with extpresignals on)
- buying additional train engines and changing the direction they're facing (with multihead on)
- borrowing and repaying the maximum amount (with debtmax on)
- removal of industries, transmitters, lighthouses etc. (with the appropriate bits of morebuildoptions on).
And then Csaboka added the rest of the stability features.
Assuming it can be made to work by IP address over the Internet AND through firewalls, then this would be a great thing. This is because it is lots easier to get 3 or more people to play the game throughout the entire Internet, than in one physical place at a time. I'd play it with my brother and wife, on my internal network and over the Internet combined.
BUT it's not worth doing until all the Patch features work in multiplayer without crashing - the Ctrl problem solved, for instance. I haven't attempted multiplayer in years now, so I don't know how much better it's gotten.
There may be some other issues - such as, do all the computers automatically use the Patch settings of the host system? Otherwise, either there would be playability problems, or the big coordination pain of manually making sure all the CFG files are exactly the same.
I doubt I would ever have the length of time to play multi-player against one person, let alone more than one. I think that you should only work on it, if you want to see it done, and you would be able to use it .
I appreciate what you have done so far, only do this if you see a use for yourself.
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