Hard Light Productions Forums

General FreeSpace => Multiplayer => Topic started by: Hoot on March 12, 2013, 05:48:13 am

Title: Multiplayer Run between capital ships
Post by: Hoot on March 12, 2013, 05:48:13 am
I would love to play in a multiplayer setting where many big capital ships stay really close to one another, between which the players would have to fly through and battle each other.
So that players are almost constantly under fire from the opponent's capital flaks and lasers and would have to mind "random" Big Beams that strike after capitals as well.

I could imagine this narrow-walls-setting could add a lot to  adrenaline ... Does anyone know if such a setting exists? I am sorry that I am not familiar enough with FRED to create such a scenario myself.
Title: Re: Multiplayer Run between capital ships
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on March 12, 2013, 06:12:46 pm
Haven't tried to make such a mission in a couple of years so this may still not be the case but it was pretty much impossible.  I know some of the issues have workarounds (like ships close together jumping all over the place on the client side can be resolved using the unmovable flag) but AFAIK others still exist.  Dogfight missions just weren't meant for non-player ships shooting at things.   Also the one issue that I know hasn't been solved is getting people to actually stay near the ships.  Every mission ever made with ships to fight around always ends up in the players moving away from the ships until it becomes just another NWTR style mission.   
Title: Re: Multiplayer Run between capital ships
Post by: karajorma on March 12, 2013, 10:12:40 pm
Making it a King of the (Exploding) Hill mission might solve that issue. :D
Title: Re: Multiplayer Run between capital ships
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on March 12, 2013, 10:45:14 pm
Except the ships tend to not quit exploding after respawn. 

/me waits for the inevitable I really need to rewrite that respawn code response from Kara.
Title: Re: Multiplayer Run between capital ships
Post by: karajorma on March 13, 2013, 10:14:46 pm
Actually I'm not certain what you mean.
Title: Re: Multiplayer Run between capital ships
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on March 13, 2013, 11:04:08 pm
Well depending on how you kill a player ship you end up with issues after the respawn.  For instance self destructing a player ship via sexp can cause the client side ship to repeatedly self destruct after respawning (or at least it used to).  Killing the player with fire say a fire beam sexp had a similar effect.  The beam that killed you turned around and shot you again after you respawned.  Then there is always the possibility that you respawn outside the playfield causing the death condition to fire again since it has to be a repeating event and you don't know how quick or slowly someone will actually hit the respawn button.  Use of variables didn't work well either client side (unless passing variables to the client was ever upgraded) so even trying to implement a timer to allow the player to get back in bounds was a flop. 

Again I haven't tried to make such a mission in a couple of years so some of these things may well work now but I doubt enough do to get a reliable working version.   
Title: Re: Multiplayer Run between capital ships
Post by: chief1983 on April 01, 2013, 06:41:42 pm
Why not just shoot it out inside a giant sphere/box, cage match style?  I imagine the game once had issues with something such as that, but haven't changes to the engine over time made that slightly more feasible?
Title: Re: Multiplayer Run between capital ships
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on April 01, 2013, 07:12:59 pm
Well the problem with that is the code tends to respawn you outside the area no matter where you set up the spawns at.  It must do some kind of radius check and move you outside.
Title: Re: Multiplayer Run between capital ships
Post by: karajorma on April 01, 2013, 10:55:58 pm
It does. I have code to stop it doing that which I was planning to integrate as part of the respawn code rewrite.
Title: Re: Multiplayer Run between capital ships
Post by: soilder198 on April 03, 2013, 10:57:41 pm
What would be even more fun is, everyone has to pilot an ulysses, and instead of shooting each other, you must race between the capital ships while they fire at you.
Title: Re: Multiplayer Run between capital ships
Post by: Hoot on April 04, 2013, 02:43:08 am
What would be even more fun is, everyone has to pilot an ulysses, and instead of shooting each other, you must race between the capital ships while they fire at you.

That's the spirit! Sounds like a multiplayer mod with a bunch of those special missions (Capital Ship Run, Spiked Trench Dogfighting, Hide And Destroy, ...) could become quite _very_ interesting. Any coders out there who would like to give it a try? I cannot code (other than HTML, CSS and some PHP), but at least would offer beta testing and basic voice acting.

If so, we should open a new topic on this, "Mod: Special Multiplayer Missions" or similar.
Title: Re: Multiplayer Run between capital ships
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on April 04, 2013, 03:10:40 am
Why would you need a mod for this?  The code needs fixed for these types of things to work and no mod is going to help that.  Once they are fixed you just need to create the missions no mod needed. 
Title: Re: Multiplayer Run between capital ships
Post by: Hoot on April 04, 2013, 04:29:37 am
Well, true, "mission pack" would be more correct; yet a mod could be interesting if there would be special things like trenches or tubes or other special effects in/as stage fields.