[Hellstryker]

So there are more than a few friends who I'd like to play FS with, but outside of the vanilla campaign, no high quality and/or decent length campaigns come to mind. Am I just missing something or are there really a lack of co-op campaigns, and if so why? I get that there are some which have single player missions and all that, but it wouldn't be too hard to script a spectator in for cinematic stuff or just cut those missions out altogether. I'm not much of a fredder myself, but even I'd be tempted to try to turn some existing campaigns co-op if I get the time.

[azile0]

i agereee

[Hellstryker]

...ok

[Droid803]

Hmm, this piques my interest.
However, I can number a few reasons why such campaigns don't exist:
First is the fact that a number of SEXPs don't work for multiplayer severely limits the amount of cool****™ that can be done.
Also, there's a bit of lack of documentation for which work and which don't.

Okay, so you've managed to convert an existing campaign to co-op form, or have FRED'ed up some new co-op missions for a co-op campaign - you still have the one biggest and hardest step in all of FSO modding: Testing.

Testing co-op missions would be a royal pain in the ass, seeing as you'd need to coordinate at least two people playing it at the same time. Heck, it's hard enough to test by yourself on your own time, or to get people to test on their own time - having to pick times that work for more than one person, for something as boring/repetitive as testing!? What happens if you find a bug to fix - the other guy has to wait for you to fix it and then you both run the mission again? Imagine the horror! Nobody has the time and patience for that - getting a co-op campaign tested is practically impossible!

Trust me, I've participated in such things, (the whole BP Multi thing), the co-op missions/campaign didn't get very far before interest fizzled out due to these issues. You get a group together, fire up a co-op mission to test, and then halfway through everyone CTDs. Then they all give up and call it a day, and you can't test anymore.

[karajorma]

Hmm, this piques my interest.
However, I can number a few reasons why such campaigns don't exist:
First is the fact that a number of SEXPs don't work for multiplayer severely limits the amount of cool****™ that can be done.
Also, there's a bit of lack of documentation for which work and which don't.

I am in the process of fixing all the SEXPs so that they will work in multiplayer. As far as I'm aware there are only be two SEXPs which can't be fixed for multiplayer key-pressed and player-use-ai. The former isn't even impossible, I have written a SEXP to replace it which would work in multiplayer missions but the problem is that it requires strings with more than 32 characters to work. If anything else doesn't work, submit it to Mantis and I'll get it fixed.

Okay, so you've managed to convert an existing campaign to co-op form, or have FRED'ed up some new co-op missions for a co-op campaign - you still have the one biggest and hardest step in all of FSO modding: Testing.

Testing co-op missions would be a royal pain in the ass, seeing as you'd need to coordinate at least two people playing it at the same time. Heck, it's hard enough to test by yourself on your own time, or to get people to test on their own time - having to pick times that work for more than one person, for something as boring/repetitive as testing!? What happens if you find a bug to fix - the other guy has to wait for you to fix it and then you both run the mission again? Imagine the horror! Nobody has the time and patience for that - getting a co-op campaign tested is practically impossible!

Trust me, I've participated in such things, (the whole BP Multi thing), the co-op missions/campaign didn't get very far before interest fizzled out due to these issues. You get a group together, fire up a co-op mission to test, and then halfway through everyone CTDs. Then they all give up and call it a day, and you can't test anymore.

Yes, this is indeed the biggest issue. It's definitely the problem the Diaspora multiplayer beta is facing right now. But it's not completely impossible to get around. One solution is to develop missions that work for both a single player and multiple players. That way you can test most of the game logic for player 1 and it's only the multiplayer bits that require more testing.

[General Battuta]

Fundamentally my issue with getting more involve in multiplayer work is the netcode. It doesn't feel fun to play even on a LAN environment. Not to mention the difficulties we had finding good hosts that everybody could connect to.

If these technical hurdles could be solved somehow it would do a lot for the multiplayer scene.

[bigchunk1]

Basically everything droid said. Coop conversions aren't really all that hard to make in fred. You just have to add the extra ships, make it a coop campaign and troubleshoot problems that advanced sexps might cause. That's why the retail campaign is fully converted because it uses only retail sexps, so it's much easier to convert.

But the testing aspect... it's really hard to organize a group to test. You also need a computer that is capable of hosting which can get in the way too.

Multiplayer overall is difficult to work with between the restrictive net code and the random bugs you would never think the multiplayer code would cause.

@Karajorma this is my experience from two years ago, things might be better now I don't know.

[ngld]

I could run FS2 on a dedicated server to host multiplayer games if anyone's interested...

[CP5670]

People did make numerous standalone co-op missions back in the day, which were tested extensively. We have no shortage of those, although it's true that there have been almost no co-op campaigns. The game has never handled such campaigns properly and even the few that exist like Templar are best played as individual missions for several reasons.

[halcyony2k]

karajorma is my freespace 2 multiplayer hero. I use to play multiplayer extensively with my brothers on lan and I submitted a few things on mantis. I was meaning to submit another one about a multiplayer sexp not working (skybox changes on single player but not on the clients). I will have to test this again to see if it was fixed. I started working as an accountant for a big 4 firm and I haven't seen the light of day for the past few months. Everyone nailed it though. The biggest things that prevent freespace multiplayer from growing is: jumpiness and lag (is this the netcode you guys are referring to?), single player features that don't work in multiplayer--and these things really take the flavor out of multi--such as the lack of cutscenes,  fiction-viewer, rotating parts, and other graphical issues. I think if these things get fixed, there is a chance for freespace multi to take off. The general direction of gaming is towards mulitplayer so I appreciate all that everyone does to continue to make this the best space sim out there.

[karajorma]

Fixing SEXPs for multiplayer in most cases is literally 5 minutes work in most cases.

The netcode (literally the code that does all the networking stuff) is a much bigger problem. I do intend to work on it, but every time I try, I get swamped with work.