[RazorsKiss]

First:

"Is it possible" networking/multiplayer questions.

A. Is the network code for multiplayer robust enough to handle a 32-man or 64-man server on a dedicated gaming machine? (a professionally hosted machine with the bandwidth to match)

B. Is there a a set limit for the amount of ships selectable in a multiplayer game?  (ie: you can choose x amount of ships to fly in a MP game)

C. How much would speed increases up about 250% affect network efficiency?  In Tach, the ship speeds are much, much greater.

D. How would the addition of lateral/sideways thrust affect network efficiency?  Anyone tried it, in MP?

Second:

Modeling related questions.

A. I'm suffering from "info-deluge" when it comes to finding an example .3ds ship, complete with heirarchy/group information, to convert into a .pof for further editing.  Where can one be found?  I *did* use the search function, but the amount of returns is truly staggering.

B. Does Maya have any liabilities as far as modeling for FS2 goes?  (I have one Maya user modeling for us)

Third:

Gameplay-related questions.

A. Can you have multi sectors, or theatres, available in the same map via a jumpdrive, or jumpgate, something similar?

B. Is there a capability for shield-denuding weapons?  (only target shields) Or subsystem-specific weapons?  Specifically, this would allow the EMP family (they drop shields-only) of weapons to function, from Tachyon, and the sapper-type weapons - which all affect specific "subsystems", such as engines, shields, and etc.

C. Can support ships repair hull damage, with modification?

D. Is there a way to *change* weapons loadouts in-game? Like docking with/landing on a carrier?

E. Weapons that "charge" up up for full effect - possible?  (Solaris torpedo, to be specific - very slow moving, but almost insta-kill when fully charged, and they hit)

[Black Wolf]

Gameplay-related questions.

A. Can you have multi sectors, or theatres, available in the same map via a jumpdrive, or jumpgate, something similar?

B. Is there a capability for shield-denuding weapons?  (only target shields) Or subsystem-specific weapons?  Specifically, this would allow the EMP family (they drop shields-only) of weapons to function, from Tachyon, and the sapper-type weapons - which all affect specific "subsystems", such as engines, shields, and etc.

C. Can support ships repair hull damage, with modification?

D. Is there a way to *change* weapons loadouts in-game? Like docking with/landing on a carrier?

E. Weapons that "charge" up up for full effect - possible?  (Solaris torpedo, to be specific - very slow moving, but almost insta-kill when fully charged, and they hit)

A - Kinda, with some clever FREDding. Goober did something similar awhileback, but I've forgotten the name right a the moment... it's not overly difficult though, IIRC, once you have the campaign editor sorted.

B - These have been available since retail - the Akheton SDG and the Circe.

C - Yep, it's a Source Code feature.

D - Not at present, AFAIK.

E - Nope, I don't think so (Assuming you mean in the vein of Descent's fusion cannon - it's a regularly requested feature though.

[karajorma]

First:

"Is it possible" networking/multiplayer questions.

A. Is the network code for multiplayer robust enough to handle a 32-man or 64-man server on a dedicated gaming machine? (a professionally hosted machine with the bandwidth to match)

B. Is there a a set limit for the amount of ships selectable in a multiplayer game?  (ie: you can choose x amount of ships to fly in a MP game)

The limits FS2 currently imposes are as follows

Coop - 12 players
TvT - 2x4 players on each team
Dogfight - 12 players

Those are for actual players. You can stick in a bunch more AI fighters of course.

I would love to see if those limits can be changed but it would be a massive project to do it. Don't expect it till 3.7 even if I am crazy enough attempt it.

C. How much would speed increases up about 250% affect network efficiency?  In Tach, the ship speeds are much, much greater.

I can't see it affecting efficiency. I can see it affecting the AI. Personally I don't remember Tachyon fighters being that much faster. Are they or do they simply claim they are on the HUD?

D. How would the addition of lateral/sideways thrust affect network efficiency?  Anyone tried it, in MP?

Didn't affect BSG one iota as far as I can see.

Gameplay-related questions.

A. Can you have multi sectors, or theatres, available in the same map via a jumpdrive, or jumpgate, something similar?

Yes. Maybe. Be prepared to find lots of bugs in the code when you try it though. Multiplayer has been badly neglected up until now and we're kinda paying the price for it now (Or rather Taylor and I are paying the price ).

D. Is there a way to *change* weapons loadouts in-game? Like docking with/landing on a carrier?

Change weapon SEXPs exist making it possible to roll your own Events to do that. You could designate a certain area for each weapon and have them change once the player spends a certain amount of time there.

Be warned that the SEXPs don't work in multiplayer I'm in the process of fixing that particular bug as we speak though.

[RazorsKiss]

Very cool   Hope I can get some answers as complete as those for my other questions!

[Gregster2k]

Turning FreeSpace into a massively multiplayer online first person flight shootemup would be appealing. The question is, can we find three hundred fighter pilots and 50 captains (1 per capship)? And will our systems and internet connections handle the horror?

wahaha...

[RazorsKiss]

Oy.  A little big even for my "sky's the limit" tastes

I'd settle for Tach's current 32 players, with this engine.  It can look very, very pretty

I know that Tach's client-based system gave it limits noone else had (and hacking problems noone else had) - but what's the major difference with the network code?

Comparable-age games can get 2 dozen or more players, can't they?  I know Mechwarrior can, and Allegiance.  Tach's release date was Apr 19, 2000.  FS2 was October, 1999, Allegiance was March, 2000 - within months of each other.

What needs to be fixed? 

Note: I'm not trying to be a "gimme gimme" - I genuinely want to know what the limitation is.

[BS403]

A - Kinda, with some clever FREDding. Goober did something similar awhileback, but I've forgotten the name right a the moment... it's not overly difficult though, IIRC, once you have the campaign editor sorted.

it was called freespacelancer

[karajorma]

What needs to be fixed? 

Note: I'm not trying to be a "gimme gimme" - I genuinely want to know what the limitation is.

Basically the fact that everything seems to have been coded with the limits I gave you in mind. The problem isn't that the FS2 code couldn't handle more players because of its age so much as the fact that it was designed with those limits already set.

Let me give you a for instance. The loadout screen. One reason why you can only have 12 players in coop and dogfight is because the loadout screen will only let you have 12 ships displayed. So if you want to raise that limit you'll need to rewrite all the loadout code that uses the hard limit of 12 ships and redo all the interface art to allow you more than 12 players.

In addition because FS2_Open must run with retail data you can't even make the new interface a requirement. Therefore you need to be able to switch between the two or go over to an interface which is generated in the same way we can now generate icons for each ship rather than requiring them.

As you can (hopefully) see that's a pretty major task and even when you've done it all you've succeeding in doing is changing the interface to let you pick and arm more ships. You still won't have changed any of the underlying code that makes the game able to actually handle them in game.


I've had a few thoughts on the topic so far and if I do decide to try expanding the limits I'll be starting with TvT not dogfight mode (which I suspect is the one you want to see improved). The reason I'm suggesting TvT goes first is that with luck I shouldn't have to touch the interface to allow two teams of twelve players as the game already supports that number in other modes.

The other possibility is to allow more teams. The game seems to use MAX_TEAMS and Num_teams quite heavily rather than hardcoding the number of teams so it may be possible to get more players by having 4 or more teams.

Anyway at the moment this is pretty much all idle speculation based on what I've seen of the code while dealing with other problems. I've not taken any kind of a serious look into upgrading the numbers and its pretty unlikely that I'll be doing it soon even if I do it.

That said I'm on the BSG mod team and I'd love to see missions where Galactica's squadrons face up to a basestar's raiders and all the ships are player controlled.

[bizzybody]

So expanding the number of fighters in a wing would be up there on the "Not likely to ever happen." list? Alpha Strike capability, with the player able to issue orders to everything, would be so damn cool.  8)

[karajorma]

I wouldn't go that far. I really do want this after all.

But it would be a lot of hard work, involve a lot of rewriting of the code and I'd have to have a lot more experience with the FS2 code before I'd want to take it on.

[RazorsKiss]

So, changing it in

1. Deathmatch/dogfight mode

and 2. Team versus team, IF you make mnore teams, instead of more per team?

I would be fine with 12 *per* team - because that's an actual squadron.

Personally, I would *prefer* 64+ players in every gametype, but we're just beginning the mod - so we likely won't be done (at the scale we want to be done) for quite a while.  I purposely put large-scale multiplayer testing towards the end of my benchmark list - because I knew it wasn't done, and may not be for a while

Would you like me to make that an official feature request, incidentally?

Thanks yet again for the detailed response.  This community rocks.

[karajorma]

As far as I'm concerned one of the BSG FREDders (me) has already made an official feature request to a coder (also me). If I manage to ever find another coder willing to work on it I'll ask them too

[bizzybody]

Whatever is done is/will be cool. I'm still playing through the FS1 campaign ported to FS2 and also got started on the FS2 campaign. (Both in retail.) Having only two wingmen or sometimes three in my flight often seems to be a lot shorthanded. Then there's the limitation on how many wings can be given orders to, when they're available.

I'd love to be the 'bear in the air', el supremo fighter commander with a bunch of fighter and bomber flights taking orders instead of getting their silly butts shot to pieces.

Hmmmm. Sounds like 'Freespace: RealTimeStrategy'...

P.S. Off Topic etc... A while back there was this nifty realtime strategy game called "The Outforce". One thing I dearly love about it is the unlimited group sizes. If the player wants to build 129 fighters and group them all together for easy 1-click command to go attack the enemy's base, he can! Unfortunately for o3games, they sold the rights to their publisher, who got stupid and insisted the game be released before it was done. Thus it only has a campaign for the Terrans and all ship, weapon and structure types for the three races have the same speeds, hit points and damages. Some even have the same names. The only differences are graphics and sounds. The AI is _smart_, if you leave a back way into your base, the AI will find it. Absolutely everything on the map can be blown up, including planets. (They take 3~4 hours realtime and when they blow it can wipe almost the whole map.) Finally, the game has towships that can be used for nifty shiznit like slingshotting turrets and nuclear bombs at the enemy. (Teleport nuke jammed? Slingshot it at the enemy base and watch the turrets blow it up!)

[Backslash]

B. Is there a a set limit for the amount of ships selectable in a multiplayer game?  (ie: you can choose x amount of ships to fly in a MP game)

Just to clarify, do you mean the number of different ships available to you, the player, to pick one from?  If so, I've got a mission that allows me to pick from 26 different fighters... so no I don't know if there's a set limit, but it's either reasonably high, or the same number as the max number of ships in the table itself.  Not sure.  How many do you need?

C. How much would speed increases up about 250% affect network efficiency?  In Tach, the ship speeds are much, much greater.

Look into this -- there may be just a conversion factor involved.  The important thing is the 'feel', not the numbers... we don't want to blow by the enemy so fast you can't even get a shot off before you have to turn around.  If, for example, it turned out that speed 150 "felt" like what a light fighter should be going, you'd choose speed 150, even if Tachyon claims 450 or whatever.  Actually, I'm meant to be working on code that changes the displayed speed, multiplies it by a factor, so this may be useful for you too.  (Misplaced some of the code during a work move, but I'm almost done.)

Man, I haven't played Tachyon in a while.  Do we know how big any of the capital ships are (in real distance)?  How long does it take for a medium fighter to fly from end to end of one, and at what reported speed?

[RazorsKiss]

Just to answer the following question:  WARNING, several images!

Man, I haven't played Tachyon in a while.  Do we know how big any of the capital ships are...

I don't know, in real distance.  Tach doesn't do well in delineating that.  Here's a visual example, though.  I'll get to the rest in another post.

A lineup of capital ships, from a custom map JGZ did a couple days ago.



Now, see the largest ship, to the left?  That's the Zeus, Galspan's ultra-carrier.

This is an Archangel - heavy assault fighter.  It's right next to the nose of the Zeus.  See that lil speck of a thing?



Now, I'm sure you saw those logos on the front quarters.  This is an Arch - inside one of those logos.



A medical frigate - a mid-sized capitol class ship, but small for one of the military ships.

Here's an arch on top of it's bridge. 



Now, compared to the whole ship.



Now, next to the engines of the Star Patrol Cruiser.

[RazorsKiss]

Just to clarify, do you mean the number of different ships available to you, the player, to pick one from?  If so, I've got a mission that allows me to pick from 26 different fighters... so no I don't know if there's a set limit, but it's either reasonably high, or the same number as the max number of ships in the table itself.  Not sure.  How many do you need?

Ironically, there are exactly 26 ships we plan to convert to be flyable - but that may be subject to revision

So, that's great.

Look into this -- there may be just a conversion factor involved.  The important thing is the 'feel', not the numbers... we don't want to blow by the enemy so fast you can't even get a shot off before you have to turn around.  If, for example, it turned out that speed 150 "felt" like what a light fighter should be going, you'd choose speed 150, even if Tachyon claims 450 or whatever.  Actually, I'm meant to be working on code that changes the displayed speed, multiplies it by a factor, so this may be useful for you too.  (Misplaced some of the code during a work move, but I'm almost done.)

"Feel"

Well, let's put it this way.   5-6 people I've talked to, in comparing FS2 (retail) to Tachyon - used the word "brick" for FS2 ships.  All of the references were expressing concerns about whether FS2's model could even work for Tach, due to the ship speeds.  Not that the FS2 speeds are bad - it's a completely different game - but the acceleration is, in my estimation, at least 3 times what FS2's accel is, in the interceptor class.  Especially in some of the mod ships we added in later.  The Enforcer, the Star Patrol fighter, would be about 5 times - stock.  It can walk away from the fastest player-flyable fighter, the Pegasus, like it's standing still.

As far as "blowing by" an enemy is concerned, that's part of what makes Tachyon so stinking fast-paced.  An interceptor can walk away from any missile in the game like the Enforcer can walk away from an interceptor.   Due to the lateral thrust component, most dogfights end up being multi-axis centrifuges, or tightly spiraling, whirling slugfests.   It's very hard to convey the speed that everything happens in Tachyon.   high speeds are fine - because with lateral thrust, jousting is not only by-default almost eliminated, but it's actually a liability in almost every case.  You have to account for too many axes of movement for any sort of circle-joust to work with any degree of accuracy.   So, the action is very topsy turvy, and definitely not planar in any sense of the word.  In fact, the name of the game is to be as erratic, as unpredictable, and as non-linear as possible - while trying to retain your ability to aim for effect.   Most shots are almost... felt.    Think back to Descent's trichording - add a couple notches of difficulty - eliminate any non-trichording effectiveness, and step the speeds up by 3-4 times.

That's Tachyon, in a nutshell.
     

Do we know how big any of the capital ships are (in real distance)?  How long does it take for a medium fighter to fly from end to end of one, and at what reported speed?

I clocked between 9 secs for the medical frigate, and 14 seconds for the Zeus, at cruise speed for the Archangel.
(~580 slu)  The rest fall in between.

[Backslash]

Wow, now I'm sorry I missed out on Tachyon multiplayer.  That sounds awesome.

The trichording thing will be fun.  The trick will be coming up with a control scheme that us Freespace users can get used to...

As far as I know, the Freespace engine physics can handle the high speeds and accelerations no problem, but I'm not sure about collision detection (both weapons and ships)... both may need a few (hopefully simple) tweaks.  As for how lag will affect this... I'm hoping it won't be too bad, but testing will tell.

Well I've dug up my copy of Tachyon and plan to do some 'research'   Hey, could I have that custom map for testing?

[karajorma]

See this is where the difference between real speed and claimed speed becomes important.

Going from the size of the cockpit compared with the size of the Perseus cockpit I think we can say that the Archangel must be under 50m long. Which would put the ship at under 1km long. A shot of the 50m long Ursa against the 1km long Iceni should show that I'm talking about roughly the same sort of size.

At 100m/s it should take you 10 seconds to fly past the Iceni/your medical frigate. At the speed you're talking about (~250m/s) it should be more like 4.


So unless I've been hugely unfair to the size of one of the ships I really don't think Tachyon ships are actually that much faster than anything we've seen work well in the engine previously. They just pretend that they are

A top speed of 150m/s should be more than you need.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[RazorsKiss]

See this is where the difference between real speed and claimed speed becomes important.

Going from the size of the cockpit compared with the size of the Perseus cockpit I think we can say that the Archangel must be under 50m long. Which would put the ship at under 1km long. A shot of the 50m long Ursa against the 1km long Iceni should show that I'm talking about roughly the same sort of size.

At 100m/s it should take you 10 seconds to fly past the Iceni/your medical frigate. At the speed you're talking about (~250m/s) it should be more like 4.


So unless I've been hugely unfair to the size of one of the ships I really don't think Tachyon ships are actually that much faster than anything we've seen work well in the engine previously. They just pretend that they are

A top speed of 150m/s should be more than you need.

Actually, I think it's a case of not knowing the afterburner multiplier.

At afterburner, it takes about 4 seconds - that's a stated speed of 1779, for that same ship.  For a Pegasus, actual w/afterburner speed is 2691.  Standard cruise for a Pegasus is 770.

What's the multiplier on FS afterburners again?    The cruise speeds really aren't all that different.  The afterburner speeds?  Much, much, different. On afterburner, w/a booster card, you go 4.38 times faster than standard cruise.  And, actually,. I stated the Archangel cruise speed wrongly.  It's 726 (because of the booster).   

Just did a test.  The listed speeds are actually 1.779 and 2.691, and so on.  I went out to a listed distance of 107 or so from a capship, kicked in the afterburners toward that stationary capship - and hit a stopwatch right as I hit the 100 mark - and stopped it when I rammed the hull.  It came out *very* close to 1.779 and 2.691 - not exactly, because of the actual size of the ship, and the actual centerpoint that the distance to is taken from - but very close.

Incidentally - 100 distance, at 2691 is approximately 37.75 seconds.  At 1772 (didn't quite get it up to full speed), it's 56.76, or thereabouts.  So, let me duplicate my test of a capship, with a stopwatch, and a Peg this time.

6.32 seconds, cruise - which is 770.

Which means the Medical Frigate is 4.87 units long, or theabouts.  A Peg would blow by the entire ship in 1.8 seconds at full afterburner. 

What I COULD do is set up a map with the "placeholder" nav bouys bracketing a capship, to get relative size.

But, whatever.  If you compare the ships to the space stations.... *shudders*.  You could fit Colossus inside several of them with no problem, if the fighters are comparable sizes.

So, there's my speed tests.  It's not the cruise speed that's the issue.  It's afterburner.  Anyway, we'll probably have to set one ship up by "feel" - most likely the Pegasus, since it's perhaps the most highly used ship currently.  Using that as the keystone, we can set everything else by similar percentages.

That's the plan, anyway.