[karajorma]

Odd thing is that I've opened up knife fight in notepad and there isn't a single use of the rand SEXP.

I can't think of any other way to get random behavior without using it either.

Exactly what happens at random in that mission?

[karajorma]

Hmmmmm. Did some preliminary testing and I had mixed results.

I set up an event that set a variable to a random number, printed out that number (using $variable in a message) and which set the value of Alpha 3's sensor subsystem to that variable.

The mission ran, Alpha 3's sensor subsystem displayed the correct percentage and the host machine displayed the message correctly. The client machine however did not. It reported the value of the variable as whatever the default value was.

I'll need to test this some more but this probably means that missions involving money etc are probably out. Only the host machine would keep track of how much was being earned and spent correctly. The clients would just assume that there had been no change.

The problem may have been down to me using random though so we'll see what happens when I use a variable that should be the same on both machines.

[wolfdog]

Originally posted by karajorma
Odd thing is that I've opened up knife fight in notepad and there isn't a single use of the rand SEXP.

I can't think of any other way to get random behavior without using it either.

Exactly what happens at random in that mission?

The first wing of bombers jumps in at random locations....  

But I was wrong, it was done in another way.. like this...

http://www.xs4all.nl/~joost5/cancerwing.jpg

[I_E_Maverick]

i am sorry to bump this from time to time, but i really like this idea of multiplayer games, so i would like to hear if there were any more test results, any success maybe?

i would like to try it myself, but i am so damn busy with all the ships making that i dont have the time, also i am not so experienced in FRED than most of you.

so, any progress?

[karajorma]

I had a play with it as you can see above. The basic problem is that there is no way for the machine hosting the game to inform the clients how much money each of them has made. The host can do all the calculations but it can't pass the value to the clients in any way and none of the coders understand multiplayer well enough to fix that at the moment.

You could probably make a mission where the team gain money for kills etc as a whole though. If you're willing to let the person hosting the game spend the money then you could have a campaign where the number of kills the team racks up are used in future missions. What you can't do is have a TvT or dogfight campaign where everyone racks up points and chooses what to spend them on. You may be able to make a mission where the players tell the host what they want and he picks it for them though.

It may also be possible to cheat that slightly and do it by adding a capship to the mission far away and setting subsystems to a value and then reading the value of the subsystem on the client PC. I'll have to give that a try at some point.

[Roanoke]

Heh Heh, is there anything FRED you don't have your fingers in k ?

[karajorma]

I've never actually tried making a multiplayer mission actually. All I did for this were test missions to try out the individual features I'd need to make Maverick's idea work.

That said multiplayer missions are on my list of things to try as soon as I complete one of the campaigns I'm working on. I love FREDding as long as it's a challenge and from looking at Cetanu's tutorials multiplayer has a whole load of new ones for me

[I_E_Maverick]

well, there could no team ressources then, so how about that:

each machine running this mission must get the points for their kills, how about every one on the team gets his own money for kills, so he could buy anything that he wants.

for example, the client one destroys a fighter, gets 50 points or $ or whatever, when he has 300 $ he can buy the team a fighter killer or something. the mission would be to kill the opponent team as a team, so everybody has to buy good ships for the team

[karajorma]

I don't think you're grasping the problem.

If I were running a muliplayer missions with you and I was hosting the game, my machine would calculate that you have $300 to spend on whatever you want.

Your machine however would say that you have $0 (in fact it would say you had whatever was the initial amount you started with) so as a result you wouldn't be able to buy anything.

The problem occurs because only the host machine appears to calculate variables correctly. (I'm assuming the problem lies there. It could be that it's calculating them correctly but not reporting them correctly. If that is the case then the machine would be reporting that you had $0 but would let you spend the $300 that it says you don't have!).

Now what might be possible is to cheat ever so slightly and feed those numbers into something that the game can read directly without having to resort to variables (For instance the damage a subsystem on a capship has). Since this doesn't use variables the game can use it. Reporting how much money you had in the bank however would be a different matter.

Anyway I just found out that I've got the whole of next week off so I might have to give this a try

[speedyR]

hello,

only an idea/question/request - so don't throw it away to fastly -

i haven't fredded a long time now, and also i have to say, because of my very limited time i have played fs2_open with a few missions but haven't started fred_open at all...

and multiplayer... i havne't played fs or fs2 in mp since 98/99... huh, a long time...

so, my first question:
1 ) Server has a mission file which one or all of the client(s) do not have. What's the result ?
a ) this mission won't be played (perhaps you even can't join)
b ) the mission is transfered

if b ) (if not then could that be integrated in fs2_open?)
next ones are part of the idea:

2) now what would be, if there are sexps which would SAVE parameters/values to disk ?
could that be implemented ? (yes) could it be easily done ? (maybe - your answers here)

3) from these values and some mission templates (to be more exactly the whole next mission with some place holders (right word?) for missing parameters like money, weapons, names or what ever you need - and what has to be saved to disk during the last mission) you (the server) could generate the next mission.

then when next mission starts it would be transfered to all others and fine... next stage in the dynamic storyline

only an idea, so please think twice before you hit it


btw. are there any german here who would test some very old missions (i only would rework them if they would fit "your" needs - i mean if they are "worthy" to be reworked).
missions includes speech, "but" are made for vanilla FS1...

[speedyR]

perhaps this is not a question about existing fs_open but of a new mod (including modified exe) ? a freelancer-mod ?!! hehe

[karajorma]

1) The mission will Xfer across to the client machine that doesn't have it.

2 & 3) It's an interesting idea and it would get around the problem if you could get the machines to xfer the new missions. You would however be corrupting the original version to do it though so whoever coded it would have to make sure that the changes were written to a different file.

While possible that sounds like an awful lot of programming effort. No mission ever knows which mission is following on from it as that info is saved in the campaign file not the mission itself.
 Besides variables are already saved to disk via the persistant variables option. The problem is getting those to xfer as they are stored in the pilot and campaign files (which don't Xfer as they are specific to each player).

[speedyR]

Originally posted by karajorma
2 & 3) It's an interesting idea and it would get around the problem if you could get the machines to xfer the new missions. You would however be corrupting the original version to do it though so whoever coded it would have to make sure that the changes were written to a different file.

correct. perhaps an option in the sexp ? (security relevant!!)

While possible that sounds like an awful lot of programming effort. No mission ever knows which mission is following on from it as that info is saved in the campaign file not the mission itself.

my idea was to start another process (or sub routine or whatever you call it) WHICH would change the "next" mission file (or writes into a new file).
that means the mission itself (and only he/it) has to know what mission follows.
when talking about an random campaign the order in which the missions will be played are NOT known besides the very very next one which will be determined via SEXP expressions in the actual mission and STORED in external config files (or whatever you call it)

Besides variables are already saved to disk via the persistant variables option. The problem is getting those to xfer as they are stored in the pilot and campaign files (which don't Xfer as they are specific to each player).

see above, my idea was to store in a different way.
the variables themselfs do not need to be transfered, only the generated new mission file (what's about the campaign file me asks) needs to be transfered.

[karajorma]

hmmmmm. Half an hour spent working up a proof of concept mission only to be defeated by the fact that there is no such thing as a dogfight campaign

I'd be annoyed if it weren't my own stupid fault for not checking first

I should be able convert to TvT without too much trouble but I doubt I'll be doing it today


@Speedy. I got your point. I was simply saying that since the game already writes PVs to the hard drive you might as well simply extract and use those. Of course the fact that there doesn't appear to be such a thing as a dogfight campaign rather scuppers that idea though.

[Taristin]

is a dogfight campaign?

[karajorma]

Several dogfight missions in a row. If you don't have a campaign you can't use persistent variables which means that the ideas on this thread will never work.

You can make campaigns for single player, coop and tvt but you can't make one for dogfight.

[karajorma]

Okay. I've got a campaign in its preliminary stages but I can't play it much because I'm getting all kinds of bugs which may be due to that Zeta 1 leading Alpha wing thing I reported in the multiplayer forum.

So if you guys want to try playing a campaign where you get you buy stuff with your kills I'll need some people to sign up and test this out with/for me.

I'm attaching the campaign file but if anyone is available to play sometime tonight or tomorrow post here or on Game Warden cause it's easier to test this with me around.

The campaign is in a very alpha stage so I'll explain here what's going on.

In the first mission you play a standard TvT with a Fenris cruiser each. When the mission is over you go to the shop level. Alpha & Zeta 1 have 2 minutes to approach within 200m of the ship they wish to buy. Targetting each ship will show you how much it costs and your escort list will show you how many points you have to spend from kills (You start with around 40 points as a freebie). The rest of the fighters can kill each other, kill the enemy wing leader to prevent him buying a ship or if they're feeling evil use morning stars to push him towards something he may not want to buy. Kills from this mission are not added to each teams tally.

The next mission is a repeat of the first but the fenris cruisers are replaced with whatever you bought in the preceeding mission. You'll get another shop after that followed by the final TvT mission.

Briefings, debriefings and objectives will all be added later.

Anyway here's the campaign. I've used lightspeed's nebulae and a background from Singh's emporium so if you have them you can make the mission look prettier.

Anyway here's what I've got so far

[karajorma]

Playtested with DaBrain but I've got a rather major stumbling block with the mission. The Change-Ship-Class SEXP only appears to work in singleplayer. When we both bought Aeolus class cruisers DaBrain who was hosting saw both while I still saw fenris class cruisers.

I probably could get around this using the get and set position SEXPs but it does involve a fair bit more work and is much more of a hassle and it basically limits me in what I can do (We can't make the player have a shop level in which they buy their fighters for the next mission for instance).

[I_E_Maverick]

hey, thats at least something, maybe in cooperation with the SCP you could change some of the SEXPs to your liking, so that some dificulties are solved.

thanks for you work so far, you are doing a great job on this!!

[karajorma]

Thanks for the encouragement. I was feeling a bit disheartened that DaBrain was the only person willing to download the missions let alone help test them out with me.

I'm going to continue working on this but to be honest it's a lower priority than MindGame and SoR so I'll mostly be working on it when I feel like a change.

I've got a few other ideas for multiplayer missions though.