[bigchunk1]

I took the liberty of making a TvT mission NWTR style for WoD multiplayer. You can select every single playable ship/weapon except for the Prometheus frame* (See below).

http://www.mediafire.com/?2ddxoekta12kj45 place this file (.fs2) in Wings Of Dawn/data/missions
Login with a multiplayer configured pilot and setup a game on IRC. (See multiplayer thread if you don't know how to do this.)

Me, Shade, and Archaic gave it a test...





*Unfortunately, when we tried out the Prometheus frame, the game crashed the instant the beams were fired. Thus shattering my dreams of a prometheus frame 3v1 'juggernaut' style game.

The ships/weapons open many new interesting options, but it might not be exactly balanced for multi. Use this mission to experiment with WoD multiplayer and get a sense of how it might shape into a multiplayer mod.

[AndrewofDoom]

https://subversion.assembla.com/svn/wod-multi/trunk

Okay, so here's the svn link for the WoD multiplayer project. It's a bit of a WIP, and the balance is very questionable still. Comes with 5 Dogfight missions and one TvT mission.

Now, the next thing is to get ourselves huddled together to we can do some live fire testing. So, I'm setting a date to be on this Saturday at 8:00 PM GMT. How many of you bozos can show up? Though, it may be wise to show up to our little known IRC channel known as #WoD (Which is also one Espernet with #hard-light) around 1 or 2 hours prior to the event if possible  just so I have a head count...and I know if someone is here who isn't behind a NAT router. In the meantime, I may try to squeeze some impromptu games sometime inbetween.

Also, I hate you bigchunk. Leaving me out of the loop of your works. <_<

Whatever, I will add your mission to the list after I swap out the stuff for the PvP balanced ones in the loadout...and it's done.

[bigchunk1]

...Also, I hate you bigchunk. Leaving me out of the loop of your works. <_<

Spontaneity is a daemon very few of us can control.

The helm is yours good sir, I just flicked some hot coals into the boiler.

[Shade]

*Unfortunately, when we tried out the Prometheus frame, the game crashed the instant the beams were fired. Thus shattering my dreams of a prometheus frame 3v1 'juggernaut' style game.

The prometheus frame ought to be able to work, though. TBP has used ships with player beams in multi for a long time, and the BP multi project has shown that beam turrets also work well enough. So whatever's crashing it, it's probably fixable. Guess it comes down to running a debug build and getting some logs to see what exactly is going on.

[Shade]

Bit of video from early in the testing this evening: Youtube

[bigchunk1]

[Spoon]

Completely unbalanced (but that's no suprise since I never had any multi ambitions with WoD) but quite fun regardless 

[Shade]

Balance issues are in part due to there being no limitation on available ships (or, for that matter, loadout) in the current missions. Which is fine for testing purposes, but once this gets to a more final state, missions should be built around sets of ships which more-or-less match up with each other.

For example, in retail FS2 multi there are several sets of dogfight missions, split into light, medium and heavy fighters. Plus a few which allow everything for when people just want some mindless wacky fun rather than a balanced battle. Team vs Team is a bit more tricky since you want to leave the door open for teams to make tactical decisions like keeping two people in light and agile fighters to harrass the enemy close up while two people in heavies gun them down from slightly longer range, but even here some kind of culling of the available fighters would do a lot to reduce balance problems. Even just getting rid of the top-2 super agile and top-2 ultra overpowered ships would go a long way towards making TvTs a more balanced experience, while keeping enough variation to allow for tactical play.

[AndrewofDoom]

So, yesterday's scheduled multiplayer match didn't happen, mainly in part because of my failure to make it obvious to everyone here. So, let's try it again:

There will be another scheduled multiplayer match for Wings of Dawn mutliplayer on Thursday, February 3rd at 8 PM GMT and Saturday February 5th at 8 PM GMT.

Please attend either of them or both.  Though, it may be wise to show up to our little known IRC channel known as #WoD (Which is also one Espernet with #hard-light) around 1 or 2 hours prior to the event if possible  just so I have a head count...and I know if someone is here who isn't behind a NAT router. In the meantime, I may try to squeeze some impromptu games sometime inbetween.

 I would also like if someone could FRED more missions (esp. Coop) instead of just leaving me here to do all the FRED work. =(

[Shade]

I'll try to help with the testing, but already FREDding for two projects and I really can't fit in the time for a 3rd. Or a 4th (since I'm also helping with BP multi testing when I can).

However, to save time on coop missions, you could look into taking some of the most difficult single player WoD missions and converting them to 4-8 player coops: For a quick and dirty conversion, just increase enemy AI classes by one level (where possible), increase wing threshold by one for some or all hostile wings with several waves, and up the wave count by a couple for some or all of the hostile wings. Then turn any originally AI-controlled friendly fighters into player fighters (up to a maximum of eight - twelve players requires more drastic measures), and you have a coop. It'll still need some fine tuning to balance properly, but it should be in the ballpark.

Alternatively, do some gauntlet missions. Those are simple enough in concept that you can get the framework for even a BIG one done in a day, and provide for good, mindless coop fun.

[AndrewofDoom]

Okay, I'm done. This is over. This is just a giant generator of stress for me. My (lack of) actions has just lead this project down the wrong path to destruction and as whole makes Wings of Dawn look bad. I, for one, am ashamed at my lack of action and any action I took was counterproductive towards the goal of this project. For those who were willing to help me, thank you, but I feel I'm better as a worker rather than a manager. If someone else wants to take up this project, I'll be more than happy to give you administrator rights to the svn and work under you, but until someone does, I shall officially declare this project dead.

[General Battuta]

 

[Quanto]

What brought on that declaration?

[Droid803]

'cause he couldn't get anyone to test with him